


Washed-Up and Rundown

by spoilerarlert



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-20 20:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 51,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11342925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoilerarlert/pseuds/spoilerarlert
Summary: Levi, a washed-up ex-journalist working a dead-end custodian job, finds himself transplanted into a suburban neighborhood, serving as the legal guardian of his sixteen-year-old second cousin, twice removed, Mikasa. There, he struggles to navigate the dynamic of this two-person household and in the midst locks horns with the local pain-in-the-ass: a teenager a few houses down the street by the name of Eren Jaeger.





	1. In Which I Remember Why I Hate Lawyers

**Author's Note:**

> Based loosely on that kickass film "Manchester By the Sea" (if you haven't watched it, do yourself a favor and see it!!!)

**Levi**

STUPID FUCK: So what line of work are you in?

Would you even be making awkward small-talk if that question didn't happen to weasel its way into the conversation? Of course not. It's a fucking essential, and Americans thrive on belaboring unnecessary conversation, especially when it comes to the region I hail from: the Breadbasket of America, the Cornbelt, the great Midwest. In the spirit of being the Chicagoan I am, this is how I typically proceed:

LEVI: [ _laughs congenially, absolutely delighted to hear that you pretend to give a shit_ ] I work as a maintenance engineer. You?

 _Maintenance engineer_ , in other words:  _janitor_  with double the syllables. A pathetic attempt to glorify an otherwise lowly position in the societal work ladder. This usually ends up backfiring, as such:

STUPID FUCK: [ _blinks in confusion_ ] Ah, that's great! So what kind of things do you have to do?

If I am to actually address Stupid Fuck's question:

LEVI: [ _feigns patience when in reality stifles a crippling sense of exasperation_ ] Oh, just making sure the school's in working order. For instance, scrubbing toilet rims clean of leftover shit, scraping rotting gum off of the underside of tables, spraying down the baseball dugout that's covered in premature cum, telling kids to stop fucking on school grounds, the typical stuff.

But usually, I go for the truncated answer:

LEVI: [ _takes a long swig_ ] Basically, I'm a janitor.

* * *

The bell rings.

I glance over at Mike, and nodding, we both plug in our earphones and crank up the grunge music. Pearl Jam blasting into our ears at full volume, we camp out in the custodial office for the next twenty minutes, waiting out the storm. Out in the trenches, along the fluorescent-lit hallways, the scourges flood out, dragging along their mindless conversations and Jansport backpacks. The freshmen, too immature to hold driver's licenses, meander to the main entrance, where rows of buses, belching and groaning like drunken yellow elephants, await to deposit them back home. Shoving one another into lockers, jocks bumble through, parting the after-school traffic with their gargantuan figures. Girls travel in unbreakable clusters, forming traffic-clogging tumors in the crowds.

When the last few shitheads trickle out the exit, off to their own adolescent devices, Mike and I march into the trenches, wheel out the vacuum cleaners,  _and_  it's showtime. Vacuuming is the worst part. My first two weeks on the job, I'd drag myself home, head throbbing with a noise-induced headache. Advil was my salvation. But once that part's out of the way, the wiping and mopping is a hundred times more tolerable. With the company of a good album, the process is far less agonizing than it otherwise would be. I usually cycle through various Nirvana tracks, sometimes some classic Soundgarden, occasionally a venture into Alice in Chains.

Contact with the students is minimal, save for when kids walk through the hallways from after-school activities. Typically, they ignore me, and I'm fine with that. Sometimes, if they happened to be somewhat decent, they say hi. I nod in acknowledgement. Again, nothing too painful. What's painful is witnessing inexperienced teens bent over, slaves to their own raging hormones, but as long as I steer clear of the band room after marching band wraps up, I'm good to go.

Mike enters the custodial "office," a dingy room with mop buckets lined against the walls, fully equipped with a non-functioning mini-fridge. He collapses in the chair across from me at our plastic fold-up table. I toss him his Red Bull, our post-bathroom tradition. When you encounter the unspeakable in those stalls, taking the edge off is crucial.

A pop, a carbonated fizz, and Mike is well on his way to preserving his sanity. He downs the drink in three gulps, crushes the can in his huge hands, and wrings it towards one of the rolling garbage cans lining the walls of our office. In it goes.

"Has it ever occurred to you," Mike says, chewing on a piece of jerky, "that we haven't bitched about our job together, not once?"

Mike likes conversation. He tells me about his current girlfriend, the neighbor's kids who idolize him, the new grill he got for summer barbecues (even though it's currently the dead of winter). Being in the same room together is permission for him to start going off on some recent anecdote. Surprisingly, he doesn't annoy me. I don't have to pretend to be interested around him. He fills in the holes of silence himself with that deep, scratchy voice of his, chuckling and shrugging at his own fuck-ups.

I sip from my own Red Bull. "That so?"

"Yeah," he says. The jerky has already disappeared, and a crumpled up wrapper sails over my head, landing into a trash bin behind me. "I'm not saying that we need to start bitching and moaning nonstop, but man, we've never had a heart-to-heart roast of this job. I mean, for fuck's sake, we just cleaned about twenty toilets."

"You asking for a heart-to-heart roast right now?"

"Not particularly, I just wanna ask you something. Your honest opinion." Mike leans back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head, and he yawns. "How long are you gonna be here for?"

"Chicago?"

Mike shakes his head and gestures to our surroundings.

"This shithole?"

He nods.

"Until I get laid off." Again.

"Interesting." He muses for a moment, tapping his stubbly chin. "You don't seem like the kinda guy to end up, well, like this."

"Huh," I respond, taking another sip of my Red Bull. "So there's a janitor stereotype?"

"That's not what I mean, man. I can't really explain it, but like, just look at that thing in front of you—" He reaches over for my old copy of  _The Death of Ivan Ilyich._  He flips through the highlighter-ridden pages, notes scrawled in the margins. "Typically, we don't go near this stuff."

"Are you saying that janitors are too far gone to read Tolstoy?"

"I'm just saying that people who read this shit tend to end up other places. Like, yakking away in front of a lecture hall at, well, UChicago or Northwestern."

I laugh at this.

* * *

"You look like shit," Hanji tells me when I sit into my usual spot at the bar. A mad scientist by day; a deranged bartender by night. She claims she strikes an ideal balance in life. Translation:  _I'm neck-deep in student loans, and I suck at getting grants. SOS._

"The usual," I respond, turning my attention to the Friday game. The Blackhawks are playing our arch-rivals, the St. Louis Blues.

She slides a gin-and-tonic over and presses further. "Okay, you need to stop being so anal about the dugouts. Here, how 'bout this: take me there, and I'll take some samples, and with the powers of DNA analysis invested in me, I'll  _prove_  to you that the white-crusty stuff is  _mold_. My guess is some species of  _Cladosporium_."

"Save your nonexistent research funds. It's teenage hormones."

"C'mon, Levi. Ten samples are all I'm asking for. Ten measly little samples!"

"No wonder they're not giving you any grants," I grumble, taking a sip of my drink, grimacing. "The ratio's off again."

"Listen," she tells me, pouring more gin into my glass. "It's been a year, and you're  _still_  haven't quit yet."

"Your point?"

Hanji adjusts her glasses and points at me with the uncapped gin bottle. "Get your ass over to the  _Tribune_ , sit down at a random desk, and vomit something out. Like, it doesn't even have to be anything remotely close to that hardcore stuff you used to do. Hell, get yourself into the Fluff Piece Department, or whatever you media folks call it, and write about dog kennels and obscure holidays like National Pancake Day. Most importantly, get your head out of the toilet. Literally."

"Such a department doesn't exist," I inform her.

"Okay, fine. Go into the Science and Tech Department and give me a shameless plug. I'm thinking like a  _New Yorker_ style profile of my beginnings, my struggles, and my triumphs."

"One, there's this thing called ethical journalism, and two, there's no story here."

"Levi, you  _need_  to get writing again. You haven't been making your rent payments every month because that goddamned job is cheating you in every way possible. I mean, wages, hours, nature of work, it's ridiculous."

"Give it a rest. I'm fine where I am."

"You're anything but. You're an Ivy-educated writer who went to one of the best goddamned journalism schools in this country, and you're cleaning toilets for a living, hardly making minimum wage. The solution to  _all_  of your problems, Levi, is right there. Three blocks down." She points outside.

Three blocks down is the Tribune Tower.

I shrug. "I actually earn $13.50 an hour. Not too shabby, if you ask me."

"That's beside the point. Tell me," she insists. She pours herself a mojito with disproportionate amounts of tonic water and rum. "What exactly do you get out of working as a janitor?"

"Benefits. Health insurance."

"You also get that three blocks down. Along with double the salary. Try again."

"I create an environment conducive to the advancement of our youth."

"Bullshit. You don't give a rat's ass about privileged teenagers. Try again."

"The irony."

"What irony?"

"Teachers talk shit about janitors. Kids spit on janitors. Janitors are at rock-bottom of the pecking order, social pariahs even. School wants kids to go to college to work more dignified jobs. Yet my coworkers are some of the most decent people I've ever met, compared to the white-collar fuckers on Wall Street I've interviewed. It's a neat perspective."

"You've always been good with talking bullshit on your feet."

"What?"

Hanji sighs. "Is that  _really_  why you're working this job? That would be convincing if I wasn't aware that you're not actually writing a piece from the point-of-view of a blue-collar worker."

"Fine, the truth's out," I concede, throwing up my hands in surrender. "I like cleaning."

"Jesus, why didn't you tell me earlier? You can just clean my place every day, if that's the case!" Hanji retorts. "Levi, you really need to see help. Someone who gets how minds and brains and feelings work. Look, I can hook you up with a friend from—"

"No need, I'm perfectly fine." I slap a few bills on the counter. "See ya, I'm gonna clock out early tonight."

"Levi, seriously," she sighs, tossing me her apartment keys. "We need to have a real talk about this."

But I've already exited the bar and entered the Chicago winter outside. I gaze three blocks down. A barrier of white flurries obscures my view of the once-familiar street I walked nearly every single day. I basically lived at the Tribune Tower: bulk-sized packages of instant noodles in the corner of my office, the coffee station stocked with the strongest stuff just a five-second walk away, and a blanket filed away in a cabinet for a brief break during the early AM hours.

In journalism, you can't help but feel useless. You're just an observer. You watch shitstorms whirl, growing and growing in force, destroying lives, one by one, tearing the fabric of society into unsalvageable fibers. You can't play Superman and fly into the eye of the storm and reverse its course. That's not your job. Instead, you just watch from the sidelines—yet the world wants you to do more. You're the world's watchdog. You sniff out bullshit, you call it out, and you help fix the problem. That's what everyone wants you to do, but the reality is: most of the time, you can't do shit.

But in, dare I say,  _maintenance engineering_ , you are empowered. In your hands are the tools to fix and clean things. You can see your results, in fact  _immediately_. Don't get me wrong. I hate toilet rims. I hate discarded gum. I hate the baseball dugout. And, so help me, I  _hate_  teenagers. But what I live for now is the ability I have to clear those messes—well, aside from the teenagers. No longer am I a sideliner.

* * *

After standing in the shower for thirty minutes trying to regain circulation to my fingers and toes, I crash onto Hanji's couch with a beer, only to find out that Chicago has had a rough day. The Blackhawks lost to the Blues. Not to mention the Bears lost to the fucking Washington Redskins. Deprived of the two things that would've made my day marginally better, I deem it appropriate to drown myself in some miserable literature—kudos to Cormac McCarthy—before slipping into a nightmare-wracked coma.

When I reach for my dog-eared copy of  _The Road_ on the coffee table, I notice that my phone has netted two missed calls. For a good twenty seconds, I find myself staring at the footage of distraught Chicago fans, debating whether I should just get the task of answering these calls over with or push it off until tomorrow. Fuck it. Maybe I won the lottery. I tap a button on the machine with the bottom of my beer bottle. A message drones out:

_Hello, Mr. Ackerman. My name is Hannes Smith, and I am serving as Michael Ackerman's family attorney. I'm not sure if you have heard the tragic news yet, but your cousin passed away in a car accident this morning._

Michael? It rings a bell. Vaguely. I rack my brain, sorting through the tangled family tree of which I have little-to-no bearings. Bingo, my mind zeroes in on a sandy-haired second-cousin (or possible third-cousin?) I encountered a few times in my childhood.

_He left a will, entrusting the majority of his possessions to you until his daughter Mikasa comes of age—_

I'm stunned. Beyond occasional Thanksgiving get-togethers, I hardly know the guy, much less the fact that he has a daughter. Michael is one of those fuzzy relations that fade from existence with time and distance.

— _and in addition to that, he has listed you as the legal guardian of Mikasa in the event of untimely death. I would like to discuss the details of this arrangement with you as soon as you can. Please call me back at—_

 _The Road_  drops from my hands.

* * *

The lawyer prefers me to call him by his first-name. Hannes. He's about half a generation older than me, presumably happily married with tiny versions of himself wreaking havoc in his house. He seems like a nice guy, someone I actually wouldn't be opposed to getting a beer with—if it weren't the fact that he's trying to shove this astronomical responsibility down my gullet.

"Well, I assumed," he says, leaning back in his chair, clasping his hands together in thought, "that you and Michael would have discussed this matter before he wrote up the will."

"Well, you assumed wrong," I reply. "I don't even know this guy."

I spent the drive from Chicago to this armpit of suburbia mapping out where Michael and I lie on the family tree. After getting cut-off three times and making two coffee stops at the McDonald's chains along the way, I grappled with the concept of a second-cousin. This gave me a headache, so bear with me. First there's Mom, Kuchel. Every summer when she was a kid, she'd head to Ann Arbor to spend a month with their first-cousin, who happens to be Michael's dad. Michael, the kid of my mom's first-cousin, is therefore my second-cousin. And finally, his daughter, Mikasa, is my "second cousin, once removed."

When I was young, Mom would take me to Ann Arbor every three years or so to see her cousin, and if Michael didn't happen to be away at camp, we'd play some soccer together. In fact, I recall us smoking together on the edge of pond at some point in high school. But aside from that one bonding experience, I have little recollection of Michael Ackerman.

"Look," Hannes continues, leaning forward in his chair. He points at a line in the will. "You're the only guardian listed. This girl is sixteen. She can't live independently until she's a legal adult, and even so, her father has stated in his will that he wants someone to look after her until she's twenty-one. Levi, you're her only surviving relation."

"Relation," I repeat. "That's a stretch, don't you think? Second cousin, once removed? Tell me, Hannes. Tell me about  _your_  second cousin, once removed. I wanna know their passions. Do they have kids? Are they married yet?"

Sighing, Hannes opens his desk drawer and produces a white envelope. In an unfamiliar scrawl, my name is printed on the front. "Why don't you take a look at this?" Along with a letter opener, he hands me the envelope.

As I position the blade beneath the paper flap, I can't help but think what unwanted surprises and expectations I'm unleashing from this letter. I pause right there, teetering on the threshold between my nice, boring, dependable status quo and the imminent all-hell-shall-and-will-break-loose. Withdraw the blade. Withdraw and I remain the grumpy Chicago janitor who drinks himself to sleep when the Blackhawks lose. Or proceed? Proceed and become… a legal guardian, a rickety camel hoisting another world on his already-cramping back. I know exactly what's coming for me in this envelope. I don't even need to read what Michael wants to say. I can feel Hannes eyes on me, watching and judging, trying to read his client, probing for details.

Fuck him. I slice open the envelope with a flick of the letter opener. I pull out a piece of stationery folded into thirds. When I open it, I see, for the love of God, handwritten script: Michael's attempt to pour his soupy heart and his viscous soul into this, setting up a bog of earnest moral obligation to pull me in, committing me.

"How about this?" Hannes says gently. "Take a few days to think it over. Let me know in forty-eight hours."

* * *

 **A/N:**   **Hey all! Welcome to** _ **Washed-Up and Rundown**_ **, and I hope you guys liked this first chapter. Please let me know your thoughts about this in the comments below!**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello, friends! This one's based loosely on that kickass movie "Manchester by the Sea," so if you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and check it out!


	2. Stilted

**Mikasa**

When Mom died when I was fifteen, Carla Jaeger did her best fill the role. She gripped me in her arms when the EMT's loaded Mom into the ambulance and whisked her away, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Carla drove me to the hospital, keeping up an endless stream of comfort and support, driving with one hand on the wheel, another hand clasping mine. At the funeral, her dress was soaked in my tears. Every Friday afterwards, she always cooked a little extra for dinner and set out an extra placemat if Dad had to work overtime. Even after Eren and I had a falling-out, she'd come over with a saran-wrapped bowl of dinner, despite my insistence that everything was cool between her son and me. She'd only respond with a small, understanding smile.

Dad's death, however, hardly registers with me when I get the call during my newspaper block. It's around one in the afternoon. Our principal pulls me aside in the middle of working out spreads with Armin, saying in hushed tones that she had urgent matters of which to speak with me. I follow her down the hallways, into her dimly lit office, where I am met with by Hannes and Carla. He is trying his hardest to hold back the tears, but a few stray ones slip down his cheeks as he greets me with a pained smile. Carla embraces me, and that familiar look in her eyes, the same look she wore when she drove me to the hospital not two years ago, resurfaces. And immediately, I know what is coming.

This time, Hannes drives. Carla sits in the back with me, gripping my hand with a nostalgic firmness. We pass intersection after intersection, and I wonder which one of them was the disaster site. I'd imagine if the collision happened at around 8AM, five hours is plenty of time to clean up the mess.

"Would you like to see him?" Hannes asks me when we reached the hospital, entering through the same exact door, traveling the same exact path into the ER as Carla and I did two years ago.

Having no objections, we ride the slow, agonizingly slow, elevator down to the basement level of the hospital. When the doors creaked open, we step into the cold, unforgiving air of the morgue. The doctor who pronounced Dad to be dead at 8:17AM led us into a room filled with what look like enormous file cabinets. Out from one of those cabinets, Dad emerges, a statue. I loom over him, peering into his face, looking for what they call "peace" or "serenity" in death. But I see nothing of the sort. Not peace. Not serenity. Even in death, Dad—a man who decided to reverse roles with me after Mom died, pegging me with the responsibilities of adult while he rotted away on the couch—looked pathetic. The outer guise of the proud, noble Marine had gone limp, drooping in folds, hanging from his chin, his limbs, his belly, smothering Michael Ackerman with the reality that the man he was two years ago lost all steam and promptly deflated into nothingness.

In spite of his decline into unsalvageable apathy, Dad made me strong. Dad forced me to grow up. After all, I shouldered his deadweight for two years. I navigated the labyrinthine process of filing taxes. I tiptoed through the legal system to bail him out for his DUI. I dragged him out of the stinking cocoon he made in his bed, tossing him into the shower, forcing him to have something more wholesome than a Heineken for breakfast. I drove him to work, walked him to his cubicle, and turned on his goddamned computer before making due haste to school. And I picked him up after lacrosse practice, telling the girls that I had homework to do, so for the millionth time, I couldn't join them on their evening escapades. I did his laundry, I cooked his meals, I kicked out his parade of girlfriends when they passed out drunk on the couch, devoid of any undergarments.

I protected every last morsel of dignity he had—even if that required me to wrestle Eren to the ground, punch him in the face, and tell him to soundly "get the fuck out of my house." The tooth Eren knocked clean out of Dad's mouth laid a foot from us, bathing in its little puddle of red by two halves of a beer bottle. Blood dripped from the laceration Dad left on my cheek, trailing down to my chin, and dripping over Eren's face, mingling with his tears.

As of today, that slash has faded to a faint scar—noticeable if I have my hair tied up. Simple solution: keep my hair down when it's possible and grow a black curtain shielding the world from this side of my life.

* * *

"So the shower's right across the the hallway, and help yourself to anything in the fridge or pantry if you're hungry," Carla tells me, handing me a towel and a pillow. She then shows me how to work the electric blanket in the guest bed. "Oh," she adds, "gimme a shout if there's no more shampoo or conditioner."

"Thank you," I say quietly. I fumble over words, searching for the ones that can convey the gratitude that fills my stomach to the brim, making me almost nauseous with guilt. I come up dry.

"If you need  _anything_ , just knock," she says, enveloping me in another one of her hugs.

Regardless of her warmth, her heart, and her genuine compassion, I still feel like an intruder in the Jaeger household. Standing in a shower that I don't recognize. Using a shampoo that smells foreign to me. Putting my toothbrush beside three unfamiliar others. Curling up under a comforter that has a strange texture. The bizarrest thing of all is that since we live in the same cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood, their home is exactly the mirror image of my house down the road. The bathroom is situated along the east wall rather than the west wall. The stairs leading to the basement are facing the wrong way. It's a constant reminder that even though Carla played the role of  _Mikasa's mom_  to near-perfection, she isn't  _Mom_. This house isn't  _home_.

I can't sleep, so I take a book out of my backpack and try to read. My eyes scan the same page for fifteen minutes, registering nothing. I change tactics and log onto Facebook. This is miserably counterintuitive. My chat inbox is flooded with messages from acquaintances from school sending their prayers. The hashtag #prayforAckerman has taken over my feed.

I decide to take up Carla's offer. Throwing on a sweater, I work my way downstairs to the kitchen. From those many summers hanging with Eren as kids, the instinct for navigating the Jaeger's messy pantry still burns strong within me. The boxes of cereal are still on that second-from-the-bottom shelf, hidden behind the Costco-sized jar of pretzels and sandwiched between the peanut butter and risotto rice. Two-percent non-fat milk is still a staple of their diets.

For the most part, the house has remained unchanged. Eren's soccer stuff is still dumped in a pile in the laundry room, one cleat seemingly having disappeared. The living room furniture is arranged exactly as it was ten-plus years ago. Carla is still caring Carla. Dr. Jaeger still pops in and out of the house, driven by a haphazard hospital schedule that seemingly changes by the week.

The only dynamic shift lies in the relationship between Eren and me. No longer do we race slugs on the sidewalk. Or chatter excitedly together about Harry Potter books. Or complain about the irritating characters in our grade. Or step beyond the boundaries of mundane small-talk. We see each other in the halls; we nod to one another in acknowledgement on a good day, maybe even offer one another a hint of a smile. On a bad day, we pass one another without a single interaction. If I come across him on a neighborhood jog, I greet him politely, jogging in place as we push through the usual exchange:

_Hey._

_Hey._

_How are you doing?_

_Just got back from pre-season, you?_

_Pretty good. Gearing up for tryouts._

_Haha, I can relate. Well, don't let me distract you._

We're polite. Courteous. Civil. And efficient. Nothing more.

Footsteps thump down the stairs. A pair of blue flannel pajama pants. An oversized gray soccer team shirt that hangs from his shoulders. A green Gatorade squeeze water bottle in hand, Eren emerges. His eyes catch him, and for a moment, we're both frozen. My spoon, loaded with Cheerios and a shallow pool of milk, hovers just centimeters from my lips. His foot is mid-step. Since settling into his house, this is the first moment alone for the two of us, the moment that we've both been dreading since his mom offered to let me stay until Hannes sorts out the details.

Silently, I plead with Eren.

_Please. Just break the ice already. I don't have the courage to do it. But you do._

He obliges. Shakily.

"Uh, hey."

Carefully, nervously, he pads down the stairs, towards me. With each step, my heart pounds. The legs of the dining chair across from me scrapes against the hardwood floors. Carla used to yell at him all the time for that; I wonder if she still does. He sits facing me, tinkering with words, phrases, and sentences in his head, trying to piece together a response that will cushion all this awkward tension hanging between us like a thick smoke. "How are you doing?"

I take the bite of cereal on the spoon as an opportunity to stall for more time, more time to formulate a response. But even as I chew longer than I really need to, as I swallow more slowly than is necessary, my mind is blank. "I'm… okay," I force out, stilted and awkward.

"Cool," he says—immediately wincing at himself. He struggles to rebound. "Uh, I mean, yeah, that's… great—no, goddammit, what am I saying?"

"Lemme get you some water!" I interject, grabbing his Gatorade bottle.

"Wait, no, it's fine. I can get it myself…" His voice trails off as I head towards the refrigerator water dispenser.

"Um," I begin, staring at the options. Room temperature, cold, or iced? The instinct kicks in again. Before Eren can answer, I fill his bottle a third of the way with ice cubes and top it off with room temperature water.

"Huh," he says, peering into the bottle when I deliver it back to him. "You still remember how I take my water."

"How can anyone forget?" I answer, allowing a tiny smile.

"Yep, still that weird kid," he admits, returning the smile.

We sit there in silence, avoiding eye contact, wearing these tight smiles like they're garments meant to fit younger, more naive selves. When the absurdity of it all dawns upon us, our expressions fall slack, stooping right back to the familiar Eren and Mikasa pattern of steering clear of one another whenever possible.

"I should go to bed," I say.

"Me too," he says immediately.

We both rise from the table simultaneously but pause when we both recognize the uncomfortable synchrony about to exacerbate the already-agonizing circumstances.

"Actually, I gotta grab something from the basement," he says quickly. "Don't worry about the lights. I'll get 'em on the way up."

I nod thankfully. "Sounds good."

He heads downstairs. I rinse out my bowl and head upstairs.

In bed, I listen to his footsteps roam about downstairs. From beneath the crack of my door, I see the light from the kitchen shut off. More roaming. A  _fuck!_  when, in the nature of classic Eren, he stubs his toe on the first step. Feet tromping up the stairs. The steps stop right outside my door. There, they pause for nearly five minutes.

Softly, I get out of bed, tiptoeing towards the door, making sure the floorboards don't creak with each step. My fingertips touch the doorknob, and through its cool metal, I imagine his also making contact through this medium.

I channel all these thoughts that never seem to clear that security check between mind and mouth through this doorknob, transmitting contraband never to make its destination. Things like words of apology, of thanks, of unfettered honesty.

_It's okay,_ he says in reply, to everything.  _It was a tough time for you._

That's what he says.

_I wasn't fair to you_ , I continue, gently grasping the doorknob with all five of my fingers.

_It's okay,_ he says.  _Don't sweat it, Mikasa_.  _We're best friends, right?_

_Of course,_ I tell him.  _I hate how awkward we are now._

_It doesn't have to be awkward,_  he tells me, smiling. Not one of those constricted, pained smiles, but a true, genuine smile, the harbinger of a greater grin to come.

_Eren, I miss my best friend like crazy_.

_Same here._

The doorknob rattles.

Alarmed, I withdraw my hand. On the other side, his footsteps skitter away, and I hear the opening and closing of his bedroom door.

I don't know who shook the doorknob. Dammit, for all I know, I have no idea if he was even touching it. I'm crazy. That whole conversation in my head was nothing but a figment of my own pathetic imagination; that version of Eren speaking to me was merely a product of delusion.

I don't know him anymore.

But there's a shred of reality in what fictional Eren said.  _It doesn't have to be awkward._ Damn right it doesn't. We can cut this tension right here and right now.

I swing the door open. Emboldened by this newfound determination, I march over to his room, knock on his door.

"One sec!" he calls. Footsteps pad over. He opens the door, head cocked slightly sideways in confusion. "Hey, what's up?"

Had that determination persisted, I would've stepped forward and hugged him. Had it persisted, I would've verbalized everything that I said behind that door, and he maybe would've put voice to his side of the exchange as well. Had it persisted, I wouldn't be standing here, blinking like a moron, mouth agape like a trout, utterly speechless. My eyes drift away from his, down to the ground—where I notice blood on his hands.

"Oh my god," I breathe.

"Ah, don't worry about it," he says, eyes shifting downwards. "I stubbed my toe on that first step coming up, and I guess I somehow gave myself a cut. I didn't wanna make a mess, so I sat at the top step for a bit and, well, you know how they taught us in first-aid class with applying manual pressure on bleeds." He laughs uncomfortably. "Uh, so… is everything okay?"

"I just wanted to say 'goodnight.' Um… make sure to clean that with soap and warm water. Night."

With that, I turn on my heel and hurry back to the guest room.

"Mikasa," he says, when I reach the doorway.

"Yeah?" I pause. Neither of us make eye contact with the other.

"If you ever need someone… to talk to… you know where to find me."

He is giving me a second chance. A second chance to go over there, to say what I have to say to him. A second chance to crash straight into his arms and finally let loose the torrent of tears I've been holding in since I got that call not five hours ago or, for that matter, everything that has piled upon on my shoulders since a similar day two years ago.

But I can only say, "Thank you, Eren. Goodnight," before closing the door and going dry-eyed to sleep.

* * *

I might've been imagining it, but peering down at Dad this morning, I could still smell the alcohol on his breath.

"Let me drive you this time, Mikasa," he told me this morning. He was chipper, bright, and enthusiastic. He didn't need me to dump him into the shower or to fix his tie for him. When I came downstairs at 7:15AM, he was standing by the stove, flipping eggs, not unlike the way he once did for Mom and me. He even had some gel in his hair.

He told me he wanted to get his life together. Because he had met a woman,  _another_ woman who was looking for someone forward-moving, active, and organized.

I saw so many telltale signs of liquid confidence. The lilt in his step. The mild drawl to his speech. The liquor cabinet door, open just a crack ajar.

"No," I told him, pocketing the keys to the station wagon. "I'm driving."

He whined, he pleaded, he begged. But in the end, I dropped him off on the curb of his office, told him to have a great day.

He didn't. His Uber was T-boned at an intersection. En route to a lunch date at Panera.

Not once have I cried. Not since Mom died. Not when I see the stone-cold rock that is Dad.

Now, the question I'm currently debating is:  _should I be crying?_


	3. In Which I Remember Why I Hate Hanji

**Levi**

"You're gonna be a dad?!"

"Quit screeching," I mutter, rubbing my temples.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry, but  _goddamn_. Levi Ackerman. Soon-to-be-father. This is too good, way too good," Hanji gushes. She cracks open another beer and offers it to me. I refuse. Shrugging, she takes a long, congratulatory swig and slams it down on her kitchen table with an overdone gusto. "And I'm the first person you've told?! Wow, that really means the world to me!"

"Stop," I intone. "I'm not asking for congratulations. I'm actually asking you for your opinion."

"Either way, it's still an occasion!" she sings. "You  _never_  ask me for advice!"

"There's an important difference between advice and opinion. Advice is to be heeded. Opinions can be ignored. I'm asking for an opinion."

"Alright, okay. So the girl, right? You wanna know whether you should be her dad?"

"Legal guardian," I correct her.

"I'd imagine she's a sweet one. All midwestern and friendly, like most of the kids from the suburbs. A smartie or a partier? Are you gonna ground her if she comes home drunk and high ten minutes past curfew? Does she have a boyfriend? If she's sixteen, I'd imagine so, right? If she does, are you gonna play protective, 'fuck with my girl, I whip out the shotgun' Dad or the chill 'make sure to use protection' Dad—"

"Jesus, I don't even know if I'm signing the fucking papers. This means I'll have to relocate. Quit my job. Attend parent-student conferences. I'm not equipped for this life. It's too…"

"Normal? Conventional? Stable? Secure? Dare I say,  _meaningful_?"

"Fuck you."

"Levi, I'm 100% all for it. And let me tell you why—"

"For some stupid reason, I was expecting you to laugh this idea off with me. I'm going to bed—"

"Wait a second! You asked for my opinion!"

"Opinions can be ignored, and I'm ignoring you."

"Levi."

"What."

Hanji picks up Michael Ackerman's letters and with it she lightly whacks at me. "I think this will be good for you because you'll get out of the city and have some space to yourself to think and get your life together. And also you can quit that goddamned job since that nice fella Mikey or Matthew or whatsisname left you some pretty cozy circumstances. I mean, you're living in the  _suburbs._ How comfy does it get? No more worrying about rent, and you can finally get those debts knocked out. All successful Chicago people move to the suburbs when they make it, so I think this is a sign, a good sign. You can write again—at your own leisure, work on my profile, maybe. But most of all," her tone turns serious, "I think this Michaela will be good for you."

"Mikasa _._ "

"Yeah, so this Mikasa will be good. I'm gonna tell you straight-up, Levi. You  _suck_  with people now. You hardly talk to anyone anymore, and I think your moping-around phase is starting to decline into something that borders on pathetic. I think the girl will tease out a less lame Levi, maybe even get you back on track of things. Not to mention, have you been working out lately? I think you're growing a beer belly. All the more reason to move to the suburbs. You can go on neighborhood jogs with the golden retriever!"

Out of curiosity, and curiosity only, I poke at my abdomen under the table, out of her sight. Okay, it's surely not a  _beer belly_  in the conventional sense, but there's a hint of softness that wasn't originally present. I am puzzled as to how Hanji picked up on this.

I let out a long sigh. "This is all very idealistic, Hanji. First off, there's probably no golden retriever. And this is all disregarding the fact that I've never met this Mikasa chick. Hell, I hardly fucking know her dad."

"She seems terrific," Hanji says, scanning over the letter Michael left for me. "She's editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, salutatorian of her class as of right now, kicks ass at lacrosse, runs a crazy-fast half marathon—damn, Levi. She's the spitting image of you back in the day. I wonder if she had a burgeoning weed business like you did."

"Screw off. I don't want this responsibility."

"Did you read this part?" Hanji asks excitedly, pointing a line that I half-heartedly skimmed. "She can do her  _own_  laundry, cook her  _own_ meals, and even drive. Looks like it's hardly a responsibility on your end at all. Just make sure you know how to file taxes. You still remember how, right?"

I shrug, poking at a strange substance in the stew Hanji cooked up for dinner. I think it's pork. We're both quiet for a long while, watching the steam disappear from our bowls, empty beer bottles sprawled across the table. I look up at Hanji, and she's looking at me, grinning shamelessly.

"What?"

"Put your John-fucking-Hancock on those papers, Levi," she tells me, a smile in her voice. "You need some more responsibility in your life."

* * *

When I got my first notice, I crossed a threshold that opened up a whole new field of liberty for me. I had been working at the high school for not even two weeks, and while I dismissed every one of Hanji's comments, a deep stress nagged at me from within, peppering me with petty questions like:  _Am I going to be able to maintain my standard of living with this salary?_

My old job at the Tribune afforded me an apartment in West Town, right across the street from a decent pizza place with superb prices. I had a passable bedroom, a sizeable living room, and a kitchen—more than enough to keep a single working guy satisfied, though I'm an even simpler guy, come to think of it. All I  _really_  need is a good couch, cheap beer, and something to read.

I drew from my savings to pay for the rent when maintenance engineering didn't pull through completely, and I stayed afloat—well, until that bank account ran dry, forcing me to remind myself to ask Hanji for twenty bucks that month. I see her every fucking day, yet the question continued to slip my mind. I'm not sure if I genuinely forgot or if I willed myself to forget in an effort to save even the most pitiful morsel of pride I had left in me.

And so that letter floated into my mailbox. NOTICE, in all caps, a glaring accusation. I had three days to pay or else I had to pack up my bags.

The next day, I internally screamed obscenities as a nurse haphazardly jabbed a needle into my arm three times before a river of red managed to zip through the tube and into a bag. The conversation with the receptionist was tense, I'll admit, insisting that a check won't do, that I needed the thirty-bucks in cash, immediately.

The whole time, Hanji implored me to move out. "Why aren't you listening? You can't fucking afford this place any—" And she cut herself off right there.  _Anymore_. I can't fucking afford this place  _anymore_. I just downed another beer each time.

When the late notices began to pile up and the long-time coming unconditional quit notice came sailing in, and I let it smack me in the face. Hanji helped me peddle off one possession after the other. First, the TV, then the bed, then the microwave, everything until all I was left with was a trashbag full of clothes and a some books I refused to give up.  _The Road_  by Cormac McCarthy,  _Half the Sky_  by Nicholas Kristof, some Stephen King, and everything Kurt Vonnegut.

She threw a pillow and a blanket on the couch and granted me all-access to her refrigerator and pantry. We fought over the usual roommate matters. Who was the fucker who ate the last piece of leftover pizza? The asshole who clogged the toilet? (Always, that one's on her, I swear to God.) The shithead who forgot to buy groceries this week? But all in all, not once has Hanji bitched about me overstaying my welcome. If anything, she appreciates my company. The two of us are lonely people, and naturally, it's a good thing for two lonely people to live together.

* * *

Obviously, I decide to decline the guardianship. But in order to do just that, I need the papers Hannes dumped on me—which are nowhere to be found. I could've sworn I left them on the mail counter, in clear view, but after turning over every envelop and letter scattered across Hanji's messy counter, I come up empty-handed. Through trashcans I search, digging through last night's rotting leftovers, sifting through beer bottles we should've thrown in the recycling bin. Nothing.

I guess it somehow floated into a trashcan that Hanji might've strewn into the dumpster last night. No big deal. It's just a minor pain-in-the-ass to tell Hannes that, oops, some super important legal documents are currently en-route to a landfill. He'll probably shoot me an "are you fucking kidding me, thank God you're not this chick's legal guardian" look before go through the hassle of printing out new copies. Then it's back to the daily grind of scrubbing toilets and loathing high schoolers.

Midway through the re-run of  _Law and Order_  I decide to use to lull me into a Saturday afternoon nap, Hanji explodes through the door, which can only mean one thing: a disaster.

"Get up, get up!" she cries, rushing over to shoo me to my feet with a rolled up issue of some science publication. "We have an hour to get to Evanston!"

"The hell?" I manage, backing into a corner as she knocks my books from the coffee table into a garbage bag with a single sweep of my arm.

"Where are your clothes?" she demands. The mad, crazed mist associated with random  _eureka!_  moments has descended over her eyes. They're bulging in her sockets.

"In the washer," I answer slowly, only to have her yank me by the arm and drag me down the hall, almost forgetting to lock her own apartment in the process.

"What the fuck is going on?" I ask her as she ushers me into the elevator.

"Gotta get to Evanston ASAP," she answers, excitement blurring her words into a hasty slur.

_Ding_.

Her vice-grip still choking my arm, she whisks me into the laundry room, where my clothes bump and spin in an aging machine. Without a second thought, she stops the machine, rips open the door, and dumps my clothes, soapy and wet, into another garbage bag.

"Okay, what the hell?!" I protest, lunging for that dripping, heavy bag, but she swings it away from my reach, and next thing we know, she is stuffing me into the shotgun seat of her secondhand sedan.

I shove against her piston-like arms, but we hear a  _click_ , and she's got the seat-belt on me. The door slams. A button from her keys locks it in place, confining me, and in the blink of an eye, she's settled behind the wheel, pulling us out of the parking garage of her building, my two garbage bags' worth of belongs in stowed away in her trunk.

"Explain," I command.

"Gimme twenty minutes."

"In twenty minutes, we'll fucking be  _halfway_ there!"

"Exactly," she answers briskly, flipping on the radio to an alt-rock station. Her wrist twists the dial up to max volume. At the top of the lungs, she belts out the lyrics to an old Third Eye Blind song. "I WANT SOMETHING ELSE, TO GET ME THROUGH THIS SEMI-CHARMED KINDA LIFE—"

"JESUS-FUCKING-CHRIST—"

"I'M NOT LISTENING WHEN YOU SAY—"

She sucks in a huge breath. Oh, God. If you've ever had a 90's punk phase, you know what exactly is coming. Strap in your seat-belts. Here we go:

" _GOOD-BYEEEEEEEE!"_

My ears ring for the next twenty minutes. Even though rolling down the windows is bound to attract us horrified looks from fellow Chicagoans, it's highly-necessary damage control. Botched lyrics and migraine-triggering wails diffuse outside, diminishing the sheer, merciless torture of having it otherwise trapped within this confined space. We get through "Wonderwall," "Kryptonite," classic blink-182, and some Soundgarden song I can't recall. Each time I lunge for the volume dial, her hand instantly swats me away.

When the buildings begin to shrink in size, slowly approaching the unimpressive two-story homes characteristic of the armpit of suburbia, I reach over, grab the steering wheel, and jerk. Our car—well, more accurately,  _her_ car—violently veers to the side. If not for Hanji's foot slamming down on the brakes, we would've shot right through the railing, sending her car insurance through the roof.

"What the fuck, Levi?" she yowls, parking the car and finally, for the love of God, shutting down the radio.

"I'm literally asking you the same fucking thing! Why the  _fuck_  are we going to Evanston?"

"Uh, there's an old professor at Northwestern who called you up!"

"Bull-fucking-shit. Why would this mythical professor call  _you_  instead of me?"

Slowly, she inches her car back onto the road, continuing our adventure into who-knows-where. "Okay, I lied."

"No shit. Now tell me:  _where are we going?"_

"Mikasa Ackerman's house."

" _What?"_

"Yep."

"Mikasa... as in the chick I'm  _not_  going to be taking care of."

She shrugs. "Well, yeah, sorta, I guess."

"Sorta?"

"Congrats!" Hanji proclaims, honking the horn in celebration. "You're now her legal guardian!"

"Says who? I didn't sign any fucking papers—" And that's when it dawns on me. " _You did not._ Hanji, I swear to fucking God, don't tell me that you—"

Hanji can forge my signature perfectly. She is also capable of swiping mail off the counter, regardless of whether or not it's addressed to her. On top of that, she has zero qualms of driving to the lawyer's office and delivering him the papers, making a bullshit apology in my stead about me falling victim to the seasonal flu.

"I'm doing this for your own good," she tells me, bubbling with an air of cheery, delusional self-righteousness.

I roll down the window, stick my head out, and promptly, I vomit.


	4. Of Scrunchies and Omelettes and Scarves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa prepares to move back home and resettle into her old life with her new legal guardian.

**Mikasa**

My eyes snap open. Sunlight pours into the room from the window. Stars dance across my line of vision, and I rub my eyes, hoping to take away the dreary blur of the morning.

I paw at the nightstand beside me until my fingers wrap around my phone. My lock screen screams with notifications, inundated with the community's sympathy. That goddamned hashtag, #prayforAckerman, splattered across everywhere, pockmarking my Twitter feed, drowning my Facebook news. Someone even decided to pick a color to wear in solidarity on Monday: yellow.

I want to vomit.

Dad is dead.

Yet I don't think it has set in properly. I roll the thought over in my head, wondering when the deluge of emotions are going to roll forth, reducing me to a puddle of tears like any other grieving daughter. But the strongest emotion I feel is this nausea in the pit of my stomach.

In the bathroom, a green toothbrush cup awaits. I know it's mine because last night I didn't have one, and I decided against being a bother and asking. Also, I know Eren put it there because tied around its handle is a pink scrunchie, gleaming obnoxiously with glitter. A tiny smile sneaks onto my face. It's an inside joke between us. When we were kids, he lost a bet (it was something about who could eat a piece of cake faster), and his punishment was to wear his hair in the most embarrassing scrunchie that I could find—for two straight days. Somewhere in the photo albums in his attic is a priceless photo documenting this glorious moment, courtesy of a highly-amused Carla.

He even found me spearmint toothpaste. He remembers. It's the only flavor of toothpaste that doesn't make me gag, and this was the _one_ thing I was monstrously picky about.

In the mirror, I see that I'm grinning.

I open the faucet and silence it with a splash of icy-cold water.

"Don't be weird," I can hear his mom saying.

"Mom, stop it, she can probably hear you."

I pause on the stairs, intrigued. I can only see the front door, but their voices bend around the corner from the kitchen.

"I know you guys have had some roadblocks, but she needs people to support her right now—"

False.

"—so you're gonna have to you put all that history in the backseat for now. "

" _Mom_ , I get it. Can we _not_ talk about this right now?"

"Why don't you go call her down for breakfast?"

A pause. "Shouldn't we let her sleep in as long as she wants?"

"Of course, but you should still let her know that breakfast is ready whenever she's ready. I got a call from Hannes, so I need to head out to his office."

"Oh my God, seriously? Blueberry pancakes?"

"What's wrong with that?"

"Well, A) she hates blueberry, and B) she's a freak of nature and somehow hates pancakes. Don't you remember?"

"It's sweet that you still do."

"That's not the point!"

"You seem to have her likes and dislikes branded into your memory, so why don't you make her something she'll enjoy? Also, do me a favor and let her know that her, uh… uncle? Yeah, her _uncle_ is going to be here this afternoon because he's her legal guardian now, so she has the option of going home if she wants to. But make sure to phrase it so that she knows that she's still welcome here. Seriously, Eren, watch your tone when you tell her."

"Geez, cut me some slack. I know how to be proper human being. Hold on, she's got an uncle? I had no idea."

"Technically, he's a… uh, I've got it here somewhere. Hand me that napkin, will you?"

"Mom, you're a mess."

"Right, so this Levi Ackerman is a second cousin, once removed. It took me a while to map that whole thing out."

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"Basically," his mom says in a lower voice, just barely above earshot, "he's a stranger who happens to share the same bloodline. _Why_ her dad decided on this… this random bozo? I have no idea, but it's how it is now."

"Damn, you're doing the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you're pretending you're okay with something that you obviously disagree with."

"I am not."

"Are too."

"Eren, you're not helping."

"So I'm right! You're trying to convince yourself that it's going to be all okay, aren't you?"

"And you're grounded. The dishes better be done when I get back."

"That's so not fair. Sorry for speaking the truth."

"Quiet, child. Now go wake your bestie up in the next ten minutes. I'm off."

"God, I should be telling _you_ not to make it weird."

I can just imagine Carla kissing the crown of Eren's head.

"See ya in a bit. I love you."

Grudgingly yet genuinely, he replies, "Love you too, Mom."

* * *

 

Levi Ackerman.

I slip away from my post on the stairs, back into my room, shutting the door quietly behind me. Somehow, the name rings a bell, maybe a name that floated in passing, too wispy for me to focus on, to process. Grabbing my phone, I enter his name into Google, searching for a LinkedIn, a Facebook profile, a Twitter— _anything_ to help me jog my memory. But on social media, I come up short. Not a single hit. Clearly, he's a guy who lives off the grid.

However, he's a raging phenomenon elsewhere, namely the news. Instead of profile pages, I'm scrolling through dozens of news articles, his name emblazoned beside hotshot publications: _TIME, The Atlantic, Vox, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The New York Times,_ and mainly our local paper _The Chicago Tribune_. That's where the bell rings the loudest. Whenever I skim through the paper, I see that name. Levi Ackerman.

His articles are everywhere. Everywhere on the web, and everywhere in the world. He's hopped from southeast Asia to central Africa to the North Korean border to Russia to basically every corner of the world, covering human rights and developmental economics. Most impressive of all, he co-authored a book with _the_ Erwin Smith, the hostage journalist who lost a limb reporting on the front lines in the Middle East. They were nominated for what could've been Smith's second Pulitzer Prize.

I search for images of this Levi, and immediately, Google pulls up hundreds of images showcasing his angular face and his gelled hairstyle. He hardly smiles in any of them; even in the photo with Smith at the Pulitzer ceremony, he's just looking smugly into the camera, the line of his mouth just barely flipping upwards.

I think I might hate him.

"Mikasa?" Two knocks at the door. "You want some breakfast?" I can see Eren's shadow fidgeting in the crack beneath the doorway.

"In a sec!" I reply, staring in horror at this man who's going to be my legal guardian. Living in my house. Pissing in my toilet.

I dare myself to look up the terms "Levi Ackerman controversy." I gape at the headlines:

Levi Ackerman tweets scathing insults towards _Tribune_ editor-in-chief.

Esteemed _Tribune_ contributor Levi Ackerman caught in libel lawsuit.

Levi Ackerman publicly claims he gives "zero fucks" about lawyers.

Levi Ackerman rumored to have sizzling affair with University of Chicago scientist.

And, following this one, I close the Chrome tab, and I flop backwards onto the bed, speechless:

A drunken Levi Ackerman runs nude into _Chicago Tribune_ building and assaults editor-in-chief with doorknob?

* * *

 

Downstairs, Eren set out a plate at my temporary spot at their table. It's an omelette and a cup of Earl Grey. My favorite breakfast. He still remembers, after all these years.

He's trying to read me. Even with the distance between us, each time I find myself locked into a round of small-talk with him, those eyes of his watch me carefully, trying to scan beyond whatever facade I'm putting up.

"Not too gross, I hope?" he asks, gesturing towards the omelette.

Not in the least. It's incredible. But from the slight waver in his voice, the blip in his confidence, it dawns on me that _he_ made this. Just for me. That familiar nausea wells up within me; that queasy guilt returns. My appetite dwindles.

"Eren, you didn't have to," I say quietly. "But thank you."

"Huh?" he says, his face twisting up in confusion. "What are you saying?"

"I know your mom made blueberry pancakes originally. I could smell them from upstairs."

"Oh," he answers. Concern swims in his eyes, and the queasiness only worsens.

"No, no, I really appreciate it. It's delicious."

"Glad to hear." Mercifully, he shifts his eyes away and switches the topic. "So guess what? You've got a family member moving into your place. A… second-cousin, once removed? His name is… Leroy or something."

"Levi."

"Right, that was his name. Uh, have you ever met him?"

"Not once."

"Dang. How do you feel about this?"

"I don't really know."

"Well, I'm confident it'll work out in the end. If he's a cool guy, great. If he's an ass, then you'll put him in his place," he tells me with a grin so forced that his eyes squeezed shut in false cheer.

Why does he try so hard?

Each concise, trimmed, bullshit answer I give him is a bullet right through that armor of kindness. Yet with each fallen layer, he hastily constructs a new one, and in no-time flat, he's ready for the next shower of ammunition. _Come at me with all you've got,_ he seems to be screaming behind that grin, _I'm still going to be here_. He wants to get hurt. He wants to be collateral damage. He wants to be the bystander sucked into the raging hurricane that is my life—no, in fact, he's the idiot who wades right into the shitstorm, even with warning signs posted everywhere in plain view. He jumps the barbed wire fence, he skitters across the land mines, he tucks in his head, he charges straight into no man's land. He's a spitting image of his mother. Like mother, like two, so blindly selfless, walking around with hearts that bulge, almost to breaking-point, with compassion—those two idiots.

"Thanks," I say quietly.

I put my fork down. On my plate, all my favorites included, from minced cilantro to shredded cheddar to cubed tomatoes; all my anti-foods omitted, from sweet sweet bell peppers to mozzarella to sliced onions. This omelette, it's like a megaphone for him, screaming, _I'm here for you, whether you like it or not!_ The egg cooked a bright, chipper yellow. Yellow. #prayforAckerman

The nausea surges, and I'm about to excuse myself to run to the bathroom—when something soft runs against my ankles. A snuffling sound. Emerging from beneath the table, it's Dusty, possibly the hugest golden retriever in the Western Hemisphere, though age seems to have eaten away at his regal posture, reduced the shine of his coat to a pale blonde.

"Haven't seen him in a while," I remark, letting him sniff at my hand.

Eren laughs. "Yeah, he kinda living the retired life now. He was too lazy to climb the basement stairs to see you yesterday. Sorry, I guess he doesn't give _that_ much of a shit much about you."

He ought to follow his dog's example.

"Bummer," I sigh.

Eren checks his phone while I scratch behind Dusty's ears. I hold the belief that this dog, brimming with energy in his youth, was the one responsible for turning Eren into the inexhaustible soccer player he is. The two would charge down the neighborhood at what seemed like a full sprint for nearly an hour a day; Dusty, tongue lolling gleefully from his mouth, eager to run beyond the fenced-in backyard; Eren, brow knit in fear, dreading the prospect of getting an earful from his mom for losing the enormous dog.

"Hey, so Mom says that we should head over to your house," Eren says, peering at his text messages. "You guys are gonna meet Hannes there."

* * *

 

Outside, it's snowing.

My backpack of stuff slung over my shoulder, I walk beside him. Behind us, two trails of footsteps in the powder dusting on the sidewalk. I live four houses down, roughly a three minute journey.

"Oh," Eren says, shattering the quiet between us. "I forgot to mention that even though you can live back at your house, you're more than welcome to at our place anytime."

I can imagine him piecing that in his head, carefully, stringing together so many different permutations of words, reordering them several times until it sounds right, before stamping them with a seal of approval. An Eren of the past, on the other hand, hardly had even the most basic filter. He's careful around me. I never knew he could do it, to assume this level of patience, but this is Eren. Almost impossible to shake, loyal as a hound. Even though it pains him to put his emotions on a tight leash. Even though at his very core it's foreign to filter his pure, raw honesty. Even though, right now, despite the calm of the moment, he's dying to sever off this thin, tense cord and replace it with that firm, easy bond we once had.

But he knows that once I'm severed, I'll never come back.

I'm pulling, tugging, yanking. _Set yourself loose_. I want to see it break, I want to hear that snap, the sound of his freedom. But he's learned the patience to accommodate; as I pull, as I tug, as I yank, he moves with me in the same direction—lunging, leaping, and lurching forward as I'm pulling, tugging, and yanking backward—all with the mindless delusion to stop the tension from tearing us apart, ultimately to save this fraying link between us.

* * *

 

Hannes lives across the street from Eren.

He, Dr. Jaeger, and Dad used to meet up on our back porch every Friday to play cards and drink whiskey. Eren and I would hide in the bushes nearby to eavesdrop on their tipsy chatter. A common Hannes quote: "Goddamn you, Grisha. How has Carla not ditched you yet?"

When Eren heard this the first time as an eight-year-old, he made it his personal mission to ambush Hannes with a squirt gun whenever he had a chance. (Later, they made amends when Hannes gave Eren a pair of shiny, new cleats as an apology gift.)

A divorcee himself, Hannes lives alone with two German shepherds. Every summer, in his cargo shorts and plain, white T-shirts, he mows the lawn for Jaegers (re: for Carla). He accompanies her for walks in the evening. He babysat for her. He sold her his old station wagon for dirt-cheap, which eventually became Eren's car.

All things considered, it's unsettling to see Hannes the neighbor seated at my dining room table as Hannes the _lawyer_ , his beer belly concealed by a sleek suit, his unruly, sandy hair combed into orderly submission, his fuzzy slur polished into clear, professional diction. Instead of freshly-mowed grass and sweat, he smells of cologne when he rises from his chair to hug Eren and me.

"How are you holding up?" he asks, gripping me by the shoulders.

"I'm doing okay."

I sit down next to him, while Carla sits across from us, scribbling on a sheet of paper.

"Eren," she says, beckoning her son over. "Do me a favor and go to the grocery store for these things, will you? And when you get back, get started on the casserole if I'm not home yet."

"Uh, yeah, sure thing," he says, reaching for the list.

But she swipes it away from him at the last second. "Drive _slowly_. No more than ten over the speed limit, you hear me? And don't forget the snow's supposed to pick up later this afternoon!"

On his way out, he turns back to give me one last look of concern before heading out the front door, into the flurries.

I glance around us. "Um, so where's my…"

"Second-cousin, once removed?" Carla finishes for me. She turns to Hannes, simmering with a mother's agitation. "That's a really good question. He was supposed to be here, what, like half an hour ago? What kind of responsible parent is late to these kind of meetings?"

"Carla, relax. Maybe it's the weather. I-94 can really get backed up, I'm sure you know," Hannes tells her gently, reaching over to put his hand over hers.

"Hannes, this is ridiculous. He should know better than to take I-94."

"Carla, we talked about this earlier," Hannes says, sterner this time. He flashes a glance in my direction and shoots me a hasty, false smile of reassurance. I pretend not to pick up on the undertones of their adult conversation and return him a nod.

But Carla is approaching boiling point. She rips her hand away, and next thing we know, she's on fire, "You're telling me his girlfriend dropped off the legal documents because… sorry, remind me of the details, but because this _jackass_ had _jury duty_? On a weekend? Hannes, you're a goddamned _lawyer_ , how do you _not_ pick up on these flimsy excuses—"

"Carla—"

"—I can just see it. Oh, yes I can. This guy gets fired from his cozy job, and he finally gets what he deserves for being a jackass his whole life, and then, lo and behold—"

" _Carla_ , please. Those are tabloids, for goodness—"

"—Right when the tables are turned against him, he gets a chance to live in a nice place in Evanston, so obviously he snatches it up! But he doesn't even have the decency to A) make a viable excuse or B) deliver these highly official documents on his own or C) even make it here on time or D)—"

_Ding-dong._

"Carla," Hannes says in a weary voice. "Let's talk about this later. I'll take this, you guys sit tight."

"I'll be alright," I tell Carla, though she's still fuming, still too angry to hear me.

When Hannes opens the door, we hear yelling on the other side: " _CONGRATS ON BEING A DAAAAAD_!"

Maniacal, cackling laughter. The slam of a car door, the roar of an ignition gear, the screech of tires, and a screech, its volume bleeding as a noisy, clunky vehicle disappears into the distance:

Silence.

Hannes clears his throat. "Uh, Mr. Ackerman, is everything okay?"

A sardonic, bitter voice replies, "I landed the world's worst Uber driver. Let's just leave it at that."

Hannes reappears into the kitchen, accompanied by a scowling man, nearly a foot shorter. The man is lugging a dripping garbage bag of _something_ behind him. From pictures I Googled earlier, it's him. Levi Ackerman.

"Take a seat," Hannes says, gesturing towards the empty seat by Carla. She bristles as Levi settles himself. "This is Carla Jaeger, Mikasa's temporary guardian. And this," Hannes says, turning to me, "is Mikasa."

"Hi," Levi says stiffly, extending his hand. Carla shakes it reluctantly. He nods in my direction.

Hannes reaches into his briefcase and extracts a manila envelop. He fans out a series of legal documents, guiding us through the whole labyrinth of legal guardianship. The words seem to enter and exit my ear, unprocessed and undigested, and I settle for nodding along, waiting patiently for him to tell me where to sign.

What I focus on is Levi. I watch every one of his movements. Every twitch, every expression, and every sound he makes. As Hannes talks, Levi stares off into the distance towards the living room, ruminating over something, leaning back in his chair. His eyes are dark and piercing; suddenly, I feel them lock onto mine, and we're staring at each other down across the table. I don't dare avert my gaze, refusing to lose this first battle. After what feels like forever, he retreats—not out of defeat but out of what seems to be disinterest.

"I'll leave with you these papers to look over. We're going to need to schedule a hearing with the probate court. There, a judge will hopefully approve this arrangement, and we'll be all settled," Hannes says, stacking the papers together and handing them to Levi. "Sound good?"

"All right," Levi replies curtly.

"Well," Hannes says, glancing at Carla. "We'll leave you guys to it. And, uh, for funeral matters—"

"I got it," Mikasa says curtly. "I can handle it, Hannes."

Carla slowly rises from her chair. "Mikasa, I'll come back over with some food for you guys later tomorrow. Uh, there's a pasta in the fridge right now, so just bake that for half an hour, and you're all set."

They both bid farewell to Levi, and then it's just me and him.

"So, I'm Levi," he says. The staring game resumes.

"Mikasa," I reply.

"Sorry to hear what happened. How are you doing?"

I shrug. "I have a pulse."

"Good to hear."

The kitchen clock ticks.

"This is a cool place," he offers, looking around the house.

"Thanks."

_Tick. Tick._

"Uncle Levi? One question."

"Levi's fine. Shoot."

"Do you actually want to be my guardian?"

"I mean, I'm here."

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

"Who would be your ideal guardian?" he asks. "That Carla, huh?"

I take a moment to ponder this. "Ideally, I wouldn't need a guardian because I know how to cook, clean, and take care of myself."

"Even laundry?"

"Rookie's stuff."

"Impressive."

_Tick. Tick._

I try again. "You didn't exactly answer my question earlier. Do you really want to be here?"

"It depends."

"On work?"

"That, amongst a lot of other things."

"You're still a journalist?"

"Oh, so you did your homework."

"Yes or no?"

"Kinda."

_Tick_.

I sigh and get up. "Okay, here's how I see it. As long as you do the dishes and let me forge your signature on school forms, I'm fine with you." I get up and head towards the stairs, but I pause before the first step. "Also, just so you know, my curfew is midnight."

"Terrific."

* * *

 

Back in my room, I find that I have two texts from Eren:

_hey so u left a t-shirt in teh guest room_

_i can run it over tomorrow morning at like 11am if u want_

I respond with:

_sorry about that, sounds good thx_

Immediately, the message pops up beneath my text: _Seen at 7:41PM._

Followed by the ellipses bubble.

He's typing.

I wait. He's still typing. Typing, typing, typing. It's been at least two minutes now. But then bubble disappears.

No new messages.

Levi is a formality. So I treat him as such.

I only answer the barest minimum to his questions, only interact with him if the situation calls for it (i.e. if I need him to pass the pepper). After a brief while, he is cooperative, thankfully. I was worried at first that he was the nosy type, but he catches on fast, now only asks the necessary logistical questions: _Where's the washing machine? How does this thing work? Where do you crank up the heater?_

He spends the majority of his time in the living room, sitting on the couch—not unlike Dad. He eats our pasta dinner there, while I eat at my desk. When I come downstairs for a glass of water, the spite bubbles within me as I pass him: one foot propped up on the coffee table, one arm stretched across the back of the couch, one beer positioned in hand.. Do all Ackermans watch sports like that? Levi must have found that in the refrigerator, on Dad's beer shelf. I recall that letter Dad left me, gushing shamelessly over how accomplished and incredible and awe-inspiring Levi is. A "role model."

Taking everything Dad wrote with a hefty pile of salt was the clearly the right approach.

"You wanna beer?" Levi calls as I head back upstairs.

"I'm underage."

"I wasn't aware that that was a concern."

"I'll pass."

He shrugs.

I return my attention to my studying. Well, technically it's not studying. I did all that Friday night, after I came back from the morgue and settled into Eren's house. Chem lab, calc problem set, English paper, and history notes—all cranked out in the span of five hours. In some degree, I'm thankful for the tedium of high school homework. It's an industrial process. The hard part is figuring out the algorithms that lead you to full marks. But once you get that down pat, it's all a regular, unshifting routine from there on out. Every English essay follows the same template: form the skeleton first and then insert the ideas relevant to whatever book we're reading. The same goes for science labs and history papers. Copy-paste the template, load the template up with well-worded bullshit.

Instead, I finish Tuesday's homework. Then Wednesday's. Then Thursday's. Then Friday's. That's as far as I can get in terms of what's been explicitly assigned, but with some careful guesswork, I can at least knock out the basics of next week, taking notes in advance, anticipating what ideas they're going to feed us. But after that, I'm sitting at my desk, cleared entirely of assignments, and I'm anxious. Anxious for more. More distractions. My hands pounce on my history textbook. I'm going to outline this whole thing. This whole fucking thing.

I hear Levi coming upstairs. He lingers by my doorway, mug of something steaming in hand, a book tucked under his arm. Stephen King, from the looks of it.

"You seem swamped," he observes. "What grade are you again?"

"A junior," I reply, fighting the irritation threatening to spew out of my mouth in the form of a bitchy retort. He's distracting me. He needs to stop. Stop with this extraneous conversation.

He leans against the doorframe. He seems so incredibly… puny. Yet he holds himself with the demeanor of someone who demands respect—and fear. "Your friends also workaholics?"

"No."

"Typical teenagers, then? Snagging fakes from sketchy places, always trying to get drunk?"

"You could say that."

"I see you play lacrosse. Crazy partiers, you guys are. What position?"

"Midfielder."

"So was I, back in high school."

"Huh."

A silence.

Levi sighs. "Let me just cut to the chase. What do you want for breakfast? Or actually, a better way to put it is: Are you okay with eggs for breakfast? It's the only thing I'm capable of making."

This question catches me by surprise. Briskly, I tell him, "Don't sweat it. I can handle myself."

"Alright."

His footsteps plod to the guest room. I hear the door shuts with a soft click. Well, that's one difference between Levi and dad: the walls don't shake when Levi enters his room.

I outline for an hour before I decide to throw on a sweatshirt and go for a run. Outside, the snow has stopped, leaving a powder carpet on the sidewalks that I'll soon mar with my footprints. This winter has been tropical—that is, relative to typical Chicago winters—hardly skirting under the magic thirty-two degrees that gives us snowflakes. Before slipping out the front door, I pull a wool hat over my head and slip on some mittens. Just as I shut the door to the closet, I spy an old relic hanging from the top rack. It's my old scarf. Tattered here and there, frayed crimson threads hanging out, helter-skelter.

I close the closet door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: phewwwww, this one was a long one, but we're floppin back over to levi's pov in the next chapter. I actually struggle a bit with mikasa's voice… especially with what details to include and what details to omit because internally, she's certainly a perceptive person who picks up on her surroundings buuuut at the same time, she's deffo not an overly-verbose analyzer. It's challenging to strike that balance, but all i can do is try :') anyways, pls leave a review/comment because those little email notifications make my heart race and bring joy to my day and also it's a well-known fact that update speed rises proportionally as # of reviews do hehehe C: (i actually have the bulk of it written already so heed the aforementioned phenomenon if u want the chapter, like, i dunno, tomorrow?) anyways, shameless plug aside, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next chap 3!


	5. RIP: Colgate® Enamel Health™

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi learns the ins-and-outs of his new settings. In the midst, he encounters a not-so-pleasant neighbor.

**Levi**

It takes me a solid minute to register where I am.

No weird, familiar, home-sweet-home mildew but instead the faint scent of one of those enormous Yankee candles. A trademark aroma of middle to upper-middle class privilege. As someone currently making $13.50 an hour, I'm not particularly well-acquainted the idea of having my home smell like candy apples.

No atrocious brown wall paper but instead walls splashed with an olive paint. There's even a knockoff Monet by the door. Rather than waking up to the daily back pain I suffer from Hanji's granite boulder of a couch, I find myself ensconced in this bed, cradled in this soft, plushy mold of memory foam. I feel fresh as a fucking daisy.

To my dismay, it's still snowing. Globs of ice plummet from the sky, adding onto the thick carpet of white on the ground below. I hesitate before putting my blue toothbrush beside Mikasa's purple one for another day. There's also a green one sitting unattended in a cup. Her father's, I presume. Her  _late_  father's.

Mikasa greets me with a nod. She's at the table, working through her cereal and a cup of tea. Across from her is a plate heaped with eggs, bacon, and two toaster waffles, as well as a steaming cup of coffee. This week's issue of  _The New Yorker_  sits before her, in the process of being digested along with her breakfast.

"Mine?" I ask, pointing to the meal.

"There's no more cream," is all she answers.

"Thanks. I take it black anyways."

For the next ten minutes, we communicate only through sounds. The clinking of silverware on bowls and plates. The slurping of caffeinated beverages. The flipping of magazine pages. The crunching of, for reasons that I cannot fathom, plain corn flakes.

"So," I say, cutting into the silence. "I heard Jane Mayer's in this one." I take the last bit of the eggs, which were surprisingly delicious, far better than I can ever whip up myself, and with my empty fork, I point at the issue open before her. From the looks of it, she's working through the Talk of the Town section, a collection of commentary and opinion pieces about the latest happenings. I wonder if she's a plow, someone who reads from cover to cover, not a single line spared, or if she's a hopper, someone who picks and choose articles on whim, skipping depending on her mood.

"Nice," Mikasa grunts.

Alas, to no goddamned avail.

_As long as you do the dishes and let me forge your signature on school forms, I'm fine with you._

As per her request, I scoop up the dishes, including her bowl of cereal, dunk them in the sink, and turn on the faucet.

* * *

I'm amazed how I'm still alive after yesterday's joyride of hell.

"You forged my  _fucking_ signature," I said, refusing to look at the maniacal woman beside me. I had just managed to upchuck my entire breakfast and then some somewhere off the side of I-94. A second round was threatening to emerge as Hanji swerved into the middle lane, cutting off an enormous truck.

"Levi, Levi, Levi, before you go off on me," she countered, finally cranking down the ear-shattering radio station. "Let me explain what exactly is going on."

"Turn this car around."

"No can do," she chirped. She glared into her rearview mirror and gave someone the bird. We heard an irate honk in response. "So like I was saying before, you really need some more responsibility in your life."

" _How_  do I possibly need more responsibility?" I spat back. "I have a job, I have benefits, I pay my half of the rent—"

"You're working a dead-end job, you're hardly getting  _any_  coverage with that sorry excuse of a health insurance plan they give you, and I  _lied_. Everything you've been handing me each month is all in here." She patted an envelop in the center console. "You haven't been saving enough, Levi. Not a single penny in your rainy day! And get this. I know exactly where that money is going because I'm your goddamned bartender!"

"Well, you can actually go fuck yourself. I thought we respected each other enough to not, I dunno,  _lie_  about important things like money and official signatures and, most importantly,  _legal-fucking-guardianship_. You basically hurled me, against my will, onto this conveyor belt feeding me into…  _fatherhood_ , for fuck's sake!"

"You need this," she insisted. "I can't stand this ' _Oh, look at me! I have nothing left to lose, so watch me fling my life into a downwards spiral ending in alcoholism and debt!'_  attitude of yours. Let me tell you, Levi of 2010 would want to gut you. Levi of 2010 would grab you by the scruff of your neck and wring you senseless. Levi of 2010 would take you by the balls and—"

"Levi of 2010 would call the police and pin you for fraud, kidnapping, and reckless driving. I mean, look, you're doing 90 in a 55—"

"All day, you go through the  _same_  goddamned charade over and over and over and over.  _Oh, Christ! The Blackhawks lost! Time to annihilate my liver and go to work hungover the next day!_  Then it's off to this job that you have no business working because, so help me, you graduated with these handful of shiny, prestigious degrees. You were a  _world-class_  journalist, and I dunno, maybe your ego got to your head, but the second things get rocky, you decide to bolt—"

" _Rocky_ doesn't begin to explain anything. Don't chalk it up to a word like  _rocky_ —"

"Well,  _sorry_! Unlike you, I actually didn't go to Columbia for four years to learn how fancy-schmancy vocab words or how to write beautiful works of art—"

"Well, fuck this. I'm  _not_  going to be that chick's pretend dad. I'll explain the whole situation. Easy as that."

"And risk implicating me of fraud? You wouldn't. See, I've got this all thought out. You might think I'm a total bitch, but you'd  _never_  rat me out," she proclaimed, honking the horn twice in an irritating show of defiance.

"You're awful."

"Awfully  _supportive_!I'm kicking you out of my place, Levi, not because I hate you, but because this is a necessary step in rebounding from this pathetic state you're at. Go live in that cute, suburban house. I've already set up interviews for you to be a substitute English teacher, a librarian, and a copy editor for a local paper. You better go to all of them. Also I already sent the folks at your old job your 'I quit' letter—"

" _You did not_ _,"_ I breathed. "Fuck off, you can't control my life like this!"

"You life is so messy, you can't even control it yourself!, and now it's all a matter of getting you to stop being such a washed-up deadbeat—"

This exchange went on for another twenty minutes with no pause, no breathers, nada. The other cars, prudently so, gave us a wide berth as our beaten, battered sedan zigzagged past. Our spectacle soon caught the attention of a pair flashing red and blue lights.

The officer approached. Before Hanji could open her mouth with an unhelpfully scathing remark, I leaned across the center console. "Just give her the goddamned ticket," I told the wary sheriff. I turned to Hanji. "Looks like I  _am_  capable of ratting you out."

* * *

I've realized that awkwardness in a new households stem from boundaries. Or rather, lack thereof. The key to minimizing discomfiting encounters is to hoist up the anchor, sail out onto those choppy, unmapped waters, and take the initiative in charting out the lines.

One of these uncharted boundaries is the doorbell.

At first, I'm not sure whether I should answer it or if I should leave the task up to Mikasa. I'm currently working through that second pot of coffee, mulling over the avalanche Hanji deposited on me. But after a second thought, I pry myself from the dining table and enter the hallway right before the main door—where Mikasa and I intercept each other.

"I've got it," she says briskly. After three seconds of silence, I realize that she's staring lasers at me with those cold, empty eyes of hers, dark as ink. Translation:  _leave_ _._

Shrugging, I shuffle back to my roost and pour myself another cup. From here, I can hear muffled conversation from the main door.

"Hey," she says, opening the door. The icy, crunchy ruckus of the snowplow outside seeps into the house.

"Uh, hey." A nervous male voice. From the likes of it, a teenager. "So, I brought you this, as promised."

It's probably a clean photocopy of calculus problems ready to be demolished by Mikasa's unwavering attention. A part of me wishes it's a brownie or  _some_  form of cannabis. A common thread to tie a damper on this stilted conversation.

"Sorry about the hassle," Mikasa answers with something that I detect as… embarrassment. Red-in-the-face, squirmy, piss-in-your-pants embarrassment. A budding romance? Maybe an admire-from-afar kinda affair? A faint headache returns as Hanji's voice echoes in my head:  _Does she have a boyfriend? If she's sixteen, I'd imagine so, right? If she does, are you gonna play the protective, "fuck with my girl, I whip out the shotgun" Dad or the chill "make sure to use protection" Dad._

God, this is nauseating.

"Oh, it's no problem, really," her boyfriend (?) laughs. "I was actually headed this direction, Sasha's place, to keep the business going."

My wish might very well be granted.

"Busy day," Mikasa comments quietly, just barely above the frequency of me missing it altogether.

"Yep."

"Do… you wanna come in and... warm up or anything?" asks alter-ego Mikasa, each word punctuated with uneasiness.

The dealer (?), lucky for her, is merciful. He spares her the torture. "Ah, thanks for the offer, but I actually have quite a few stops today. Uh, that actually reminds me, do you want me to come over tomorrow morning and give you a hand with all this? This is definitely not a one-person job. "

"No, it's fine." Her response is immediate, knee-jerk. "I'll figure it out tomorrow. I kinda need to get some fresh air at some point."

"Alllllright," the love interest/weed dealer (?) replies, sounding a little unconvinced. "Well, if you change your mind, gimme a shout."

"Thanks. Stay warm."

"See ya. Oh, wait. One more thing. So Mom… can't make it today. Something came up today for her, so she just wants me to say that she's really sorry, she'll get on those casseroles as soon as stuff clears up."

"Oh, that's fine. We've got stuff in the fridge. Um, is everything okay?"

"Everything's cool, don't worry about it. Well, see ya for real now."

"Bye."

The door closes.

When she enters the kitchen to grab a tangerine, a folded-up shirt in hand, probably concealing something that I'm not supposed to know about, I smirk. "Don't forget to grind before you roll," I call after her as she heads back to her cave.

She turns around, genuinely perplexed, also a bit irked that I addressed her. "What are you talking about?"

* * *

We finish whatever left in the refrigerator for both lunch and dinner. At the dinner table, you guessed it: zip conversation, aside from occasional forays on my end into enemy territory, only to be sent scampering back, empty-handed. From several one-to-two-word answers she's given me, Mikasa's life, to put it bluntly, is  _boring_. Study, study, study, read. Study, study, study, eat. Study, read, study, study, run in the fucking snow. Study, study, study. She seems to study even when there's literally nothing to study.

"You don't go to parties or smoke?" I venture to ask at one point.

"No," comes the blunt, final response.

"Why not? Isn't it like some kinda teenage rite-of-passage? Like getting fucked-up at a party and then getting chewed-out by your parents when stumble home in the dead-of-night?"

"I wish," is all she says. She withholds all other commentary by stuffing her mouth with a forkful of casserole.

We returned to our respective distractions—Mikasa flipping through  _The New Yorker_ , me slipping back into  _Under the Dome_.

Back in the guest bedroom, bathed in the scent of Yankee candle once again, I'm finding that the words in my book are turning fuzzy, indecipherable. Flicking off the light around midnight, I deem it's time to crash. Light gleams from beneath the guestroom door. Mikasa's downstairs, preparing for her late-night spartan run in hazardous icy terrain. Another boundary I figured out today: don't mess with her and her rituals, no matter how irrational or bizarre. Don't even question her.

* * *

Tonight, I meet a familiar dream.

We're back in that dying town. A disheveled confluence of dusty roads, abandoned storefronts advertising their emptiness with shattered windows. Rats race amongst the rubble, jittering as each blast sounds in the faraway distance.

" _Tell us_ ," they say in their tongue. It's a language that I would consider to beautiful to the ears in another set of circumstances. Perhaps sitting across from them during peacetime in a cafe, discussing international politics. But that day, it sounds grating and dry, like sandpaper, capable of rubbing off any layer of confidence, false or real, that you've decided to don. " _Where do we go? The embassy?_ "

Who knew someone could ask for directions in such a harsh, menacing manner? There are a total of ten, all armed with machine guns, stomping around with heavy boots that land on the dirt with a distinct  _clunk_.

At a fork in the road I stand. Both physically and proverbially.

Physically speaking, it doesn't matter where the band of militants go. Ultimately, both forks converge, and right ahead, is the destination they're planning on blowing up. The decision hinges on who these men will meet on the way.

To my left: a small gang of local boys. The six rebel boys, aged ten to eighteen, responsible for setting an armory on fire. Along the left path, they flee with due haste to refuge, the home of a man of influence willing to take these miscreants under his wing, whisk them away from this turmoil to a town that doesn't tell time from distant explosions. Their ringleader, the eighteen-year old, gave me a lucky rock he's had since he was four. It's round and turquoise, the size of a cherry tomato. A good luck token, he told me not last week ago. He used it as a paperweight for all the stories he wrote since he was a kid, stories of an alternative-universe free from the violence that wrangled his hometown, stories that he ended up burning for fear of facing the consequences from his new government. I asked him if he was better off with the rock; after all, he was escaping capture nearly every second of his life, not to mention taking responsibility of five younger friends. " _No, you have a power that I don't have_ _,"_  he told me, pressing that charm into my hand, curling my fingers around its smooth edges. " _Make it back home. Tell the world our story_."

To my right: a British man who I have both despised and admired from the very fibers of my soul. He carries himself tall with the arrogance that I cannot bear to look at, but he possesses the heart of someone who can and will enact change in this world. In other words, he is an idealist. He has the momentum fueled by an undying confidence and the strength driven by a faith in humanity to progress. Towards him, I nurse a burning grudge, but just as strongly, I have in him the surest confidence. He has made me swallow my pride, scrap my former worldview—and he has helped me build something entirely new.

In this dream, Erwin still appears, a ghostly version of himself that still drifts with this towering, powerful essence. He stands by me, hands on my shoulders, whispering to me, "Right. Tell them to go right." He tells me that what I chose that day was the right decision—sacrificing himself to a rain of machine gun fire to save the boy who  _he_  thought would save this country. Yet in this dream, I writhe and twist away from him, insisting that I was going to pick the left path and save this man with the brilliant future ahead of him.

But this time, the ghost of Erwin stands behind me, hands on my shoulders, whispering to me, "Right. Tell them to go right." Only I turn my head, and it's not that local teenager pounding down the road, towards freedom, but instead—it's Mikasa.

* * *

I wake up with a start. I'm covered in a sweat, as I always am with this dream.

I walk along the hardwood floors in slippers, past Mikasa's room, and I enter the bathroom. Right as a dollop of toothpaste makes its way onto the bristles of my toothbrush, something rumbles outside. A low noise, quickly rising to a guttural wail.

Before I continue, I need to lay out a fundamental principle of my life: I am, by no means, in any way, a morning person. There is a strict " _leave Levi Ackerman the fuck alone if your left ball still wants its right counterpart at the end of the day"_  policy in place between the hours of before nine AM. That is, assuming that my body has already metabolized at least two hundred milligrams of caffeine before nine.

Toothbrush clattering into the sink, I storm out of the bathroom, stomp down the stairs, and in pajamas and slippers, I burst onto the front porch, armed with a tube of toothpaste. There, right fucking there. The source of the noise is a snowblower positioned in the driveway. The culprit manning the machine: an uppity teen. He's standing there, his hands smugly shoved into the pockets of his Northface, his foot positioned triumphantly on the head of a shovel stuck in the ice, watching, probably beaming stupidly, at the progress of that godforsaken machine as it shoots snow high into the air.

It then occurs to me that it's pitch-black. My watch tells me it's 7:04AM.

"HEY, FUCKER," I bellow from the porch, pointing an accusing finger at him.

No reply. The racket of the machine is too infuriating.

"Piece of shit," I mutter as I cross the backyard one step at a time, crunching through the eighteen inches of snow in my slippers. The ice gnaws at my ankles, but onward I trudge. "HEY, YOU FUCKER," I try again, halfway across the lawn. Alas, no response. Another two frigid steps tell me that his head is bobbing cluelessly, probably jamming out to some garbage teenage angst punk music blasting into his ear canal via Apple earbuds. Two feet between us, the roar of the snowblower threatening to trigger a headache in my sorry skull, I go for a take three: "GODDAMMIT, KID."

Head bob. The kid is taller than me (not that that's an issue if it comes to beating the shit out of him), a mop of unruly brown hair squashed in by a knit gray winter hat. His foot taps rhythmically against the head of the shovel. If I were a man of mercy, I would almost feel sorry for him as I watch him lip-sync passionately—too passionately, twisting his face up into these ridiculous expressions, his mouth forming God knows what depraved lyrics people can profit off of these days.

"I SWEAR TO GOD, CHILD." I swing my arm back, and with all my might, I smack him in the back of the head with the tube of Colgate, which is already in the process of freezing. My makeshift weapon hits its target with a satisfying  _thwack_.

"Dude, what the  _fuck_?" the teenager yowls, whipping around, his impudent eyes flashing. He yanks his earbuds out. "Why'd you do that, man?"

"What the hell are you doing?" I spit, motioning furiously at the machine. "It's seven in the fucking morning. The goddamned sun isn't even up yet!"

"I can't hear you!" the kid yells, competing with the machine. As if I'm a total fucking moron, he gestures at the snowblower.

"Then, use this mindblowing contraption called the OFF switch!"

He does not comprehend, giving me a gawky, confused look in response, cupping a mittened hand around an ear.

I give him a second smack atop the head before marching over to the goddamned machine myself, proceeding to grope this menace to society until I hit some switch, causing the motor to rumble down.

"Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you?" the teenager exclaims. He's got roughly four or five inches on me, a fact that he's trying to capitalize on by looming over me, only it's not working because his face is twisted up in this comical half-bewildered, half-pissed look. Not to mention one of his earbuds have popped out, hanging right over his chest, and I can hear the erratic, tasteless drumbeat blaring out of it, along with some sickening wails: probably some bastardized version of Oasis that's somehow  _all the rage_  amongst this uncultured generation, like some lost-cause endemic.

"You're disrupting the whole goddamned neighborhood," I seeth, yanking the kid's shovel off of the Ackerman property and thrusting it into his arms. "Can you at least wait until, I dunno,  _reasonable daylight hours_  before single-handedly destroying the REM cycles of every fucking person on this fucking street?"

"Hey, news flash," the kid growls, dropping the shovel back where it was: upright in the lawn. "Your driveway is  _covered_  in ice. Good luck getting that four-wheeled piece of shit, which may I add almost  _wrecked_  me the other day, out in one fucking piece."

Come to think of it, before she ding-dong ditched this house and sprinted back into her car and left me here to rot, Hanji almost ran into something yesterday as she crashed into the driveway.

Turns out it was this jackass.

This kid is the entire package, possessing everything I loathe about teenagers: firstly, a shitty attitude fueled by a delusion that he's God's greatest gift to this world; secondly, complete and utter lack of regard of the fact that,  _yes_ , there are other living, breathing beings that walk on this earth, namely living, breathing beings that,  _gasp_ , do not actually run on your schedule, which you've deemed to be universal decree, and thirdly, a hopeless vector set out to terrorize the world with this endemic of tasteless, trashy music.

"I think they've been tricking you in driver's ed all this time. They're misinforming you about this thing called  _right of way_ ," I answer him in a tone that comes out more menacing that I intend. "I'm going to do you a huge favor and set the record straight.  _Right of way_  requires smaller masses—in other words, pedestrians like  _you_ ," I jab the toothpaste through the layers of his jacket until I'm pushing against his navel, "to get the fuck out of the way when larger masses, such as my Uber, or as you stated so very eloquently, my  _four-wheeled piece of shit_  comes around. For the record, that's not my goddamned car."

"Quit slapping me around with your fucking toothpaste," the kid snarls. He grabs the tube with the intention of ripping it away from me, but I hold tight. We are locked in a scaled-down tug-of-war over Colgate® Enamel Health™.

"Let go."

"You first."

"Get off this property."

He snorts. "As if you actually live here."

"Debatable. But last time I checked, you  _certainly_  don't—which means that you're trespassing right now, pal."

"Fuck off, I'm doing a favor." He yanks the tube. I resist.

" _Favor_. Tch, I don't think you know what that word means." I jerk the Colgate in my direction, hoping that its smoothness would just slip right out of his mitten, but this kid's got a respectable grip.

"I don't—" Pull. Resist. "—understand why you're so—" Yank. Jerk. "—opposed to having—" Tug. "—your driveway—" Wrench. "—cleared!"  _Pop._

The cap comes flying loose, plummeting into the snow, and it's soon followed by a glutinous exodus of toothpaste, landing on the snow with an unimpressive  _plop_. Before he can even reject the idea of apologizing, I tear his shovel out of the ground, wielding it like a baseball bat. I take some practice swings at full impact. Yelping in surprise, he totters backwards, and I give him three intentional misses to give him time to skedaddle on out of here. On the third swing, he tries to dodge, but his foot beautifully collapses on itself, sending him plummeting ass-first into the snow. Gotcha. Game. Set. Match—

" _What the hell."_

The teenager and I both twist our heads to find Mikasa standing over us. Glowering. Like me, she's clad only in a flimsy armor of pajamas. Unlike me, she has the sense to wear actual shoes outside and avoid the horrors of having her PJ pants soaked with melted ice. Her hair is a disheveled chaos, framing her face like the mane of a lion that took a tumble through some rosebushes.

"Levi," she intones. I see she's dropped the "Uncle." I resist the urge to leap up with glee and click my fucking heels at how quickly we're bonding. "What's going on?"

"Ask this fuck." I shrug towards the upstart teenager—who's suddenly deflated, squelched of every buzzing molecule of indignation. His eyes, once burning, challenging, now sink to the ground, anchored by something crushing. I suspect teenage angst.

"I'm asking you," she answers curtly, her gaze unwavering from mine. "Why are you fighting Eren over a…" She's trying her hardest stomach the absurdity of it all. "A… tube of toothpaste?"

"He's causing a racket."

"That's what he does."

"Gee, thanks," Eren mutters.

"Come again?" I ask.

"He clears driveways for everyone. It's routine," Mikasa answers. Her gaze flickers from me to Eren, just for a brief second, before shifting back to me. Her lips are pressed in a tight, unimpressed line. "And," she turns to the kid. "It's still thirty bucks a driveway, right?"

"Mikasa, you don't have to worry about it," Eren sputters. "You should know that, I've been doing this for years for you—"

"I told you I had it covered. You didn't have to come so early," she interrupts coldly, turning back towards the house. "I'll be right back with your money."

"Mikasa," he protests, following her up the—now-plowed driveway, I notice for the first time. Courtesy of him, as it turns out.

The third member of the procession back inside, I, too, follow them, still boiling about this insufferable kid.

"Mikasa, seriously, don't do this," Eren pleads when she shoves three tens and a five into his hand.

"The five's a tip," she says, refusing to meet his gaze.

"A tip? Are you fucking kidding me? You're giving me  _a tip_. Is that where we are right now?" Eren presses on, his voice rising.

"Kid, that's more than 15%," I chip in. "I'd say, given your atrocious attitude, she's being pretty generous with you."

"Shut up," Mikasa tells me sharply. Frankly, I'm taken aback. She turns to the brat and in a softer tone, she tells him, "Eren, you should go home. Get some sleep."

He snorts. "There you go again, avoiding and avoiding whenever you run into a tough question."

I make the tiniest hint of a gesture to intervene, shifting my frame just slightly, but Mikasa's eyes instantly lock onto mine, and that dark, imposing look returns:  _Stay out_ _._  "Why, out of all the times you could've come, did choose to start the snowblower before the sun's even up?"

"My question exactly," I add, receiving a glare from Mikasa:  _I swear to fucking God, stay out_ _._  I only shrug and lean against the kitchen island countertop.

"You wouldn't have let me," he answers bitterly, burrowing his hands into his pockets. "And I only used the snowblower for that last part by the road because it was basically a pain-in-the-ass, rock-hard snowdrift that went up to my hip, thanks to the street plows. The rest I did by shovel. If it weren't for that impossible bit, we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Then, it all makes sense. Two details have made themselves clear to me. The first: this voice was the voice at the front door yesterday. The guy who I mistook to be a weed dealer. Instead, his business involves clearing icy driveways. The second:  _he's_  the one who's got a stupid teenager crush—on my second-cousin, once removed. Not the other way around. I mean, it's textbook. Boy likes girl. Boy does outrageous things to attract girl's attention, such as shoveling an entire driveway by hand, despite her protests. The only thing that deviates from the norm is the girl. She is standing her, unable to make eye contact with him, and upon further inspection, I can see why. Eren's eyes burn with an intensity that would melt that armor of ice she's built around herself, reduce her to her core, root out those inner demons that deprive her of a personality that remains hidden to me. Or perhaps even trapped from the world to see.

"Let me ask you something," he says. "And I'm not leaving until you give me a real answer, as in none of that usual BS you spout of just to veer around a tough topic." He faces her head-on. "Are we even friends anymore?"

"Of course," she says, her eyes still locked to the ground.

"Then why won't you let me help you, the way that a friend should?" he mutters, balling up the thirty-five dollars in his mittened hand and wringing the money to the ground. He marches towards the garage, fuming, and on his way out, he turns towards me and tells me very candidly to fuck off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Wow, thanks for all the reviews, you guys! This chapter was just fun(i). I hope you guys had as much fun reading this as I had writing it. God, just I identify so much with Levi sometimes, and he’s proving to be a really enjoyable voice to write. I’ve got the next chapter about 60% finished, so keep your eyes peeled for an update sometime over the weekend. Please let me know what you guys thought about this chapter! Good things, bad things, things that didn’t make sense, things that got you confused, how you felt about a certain part—all these things are super important to me, and they give me cues as to where I need to polish up. Hit me with some brutal honesty, I can take it ;)


	6. Icicles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back home, Mikasa grapples with the aftermath of her father's death, while having Levi in the house doesn't make things any easier.

**Mikasa**

"You attacked him with a  _tube of toothpaste_."

"Asshole got what was coming to him."

" _A tube of toothpaste._ "

"I stand by what I did."

By default, I'm not an angry person. That's Eren, has and always been. Vulnerable, impulsive, explosive. Years of restraining him, years of holding him back before he storms up to someone, before he socks them in the face, have taught me what anger is in its truest form. I've seen how it plows through everything rational in its path to dominating the mind, to controlling every fiber of the body. But as I stand over Levi, watching his smug, defiant face parry each and every one of my comments,  _entertained_ by the whole fiasco, I can see why anger is so irresistible.

My conscience rebukes me, reprimanding me to keep it together, but towards this…  _asshole_ , the last thing I want to do is keep my fury to a controlled simmer. He is neither entitled nor deserving of that level of patience from me.

"Eren is my  _neighbor_ ," I deadpan. "He shovels and clears driveways all the time. Yes, it was a bit of a weird time to get the snowblower going, and yes, he probably woke everyone up, but that doesn't mean you can attack him with, for God's sake, toothpaste and snow shovels!"

He sits there, in that spot at the dinner table he's been glued to the past day and a half, drinking our coffee nonstop, staring out the window as if it's the most enlightening thing to do on the planet. Even the way he  _sits_  strikes a nerve in me: leaning back in the chair, demanding it to support not only his physical weight but also his ego, arm stretched to curl around the back of another chair, claiming more than his fair share.

"You want me to send your boyfriend an apology note and a plate of condolence cookies?"

Rarely do these words come out now. While Past Mikasa was far more liberal with her tongue, the Mikasa of Now keeps utterances of this nature locked up in a box, stored in the darkest corners of my mind. But the anger, hot and boiling, sizzles up my throat, volcanic and turbulent, spewing forth in the form of three words:

_Fuck you, Levi._

I want to stomp upstairs, channeling my fury into each step, pounding the ground with so much force that I'll leave in my wake a trail of splintery holes in the hardwood floor, but the way to win this battle is to hold my ground against Levi. Seize the last word, don't let him take that clincher from you.

"You didn't answer my question. We're not enemies in this, Mikasa. You're firing in the wrong direction. Shouldn't you be pissed at the boyfriend—"

" _He isn't my boyfriend,_ " I interrupt. A silence falls between us. It just occurs to me that I'm shouting. Taking a deep breath, I lower my voice, "Just remember this. You've only lived here, for what? A day? You may be my legal guardian on paper, but you don't make the rules here."

"So you do?" he questions, tilting his chin towards me dismissively.

"Absolutely. I think 'no assaulting the neighbors for no warranted reason' is a reasonable one, don't you think?"

"Agreed."

"Then don't let me see anything like this happen again."

"Me following the rules?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The rule states that I can't assault the neighbors for  _no_  warranted reason. Today, my warranted reason was that he fucked-up my sleep."

"God, you are just—" I lob the Colgate at his face with as much strength as my arm can muster. He catches it with one hand, perfectly. He's persistent, this Levi. Like a determined fly that you swat and send reeling, only to have it buzz lazily back around your ear, unfazed by the affront.

"That was childish," he says, his voice dull. "At least you defrosted it for me. All red-hot and angry."

It takes an insane amount of self-restraint not to slam my bedroom door and send it flying off its hinges.

* * *

Brunch is guerrilla warfare.

After crashing for a few hours, I bustle in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes, chopping lettuce, and plopping cold-cuts onto bread, all while avoiding the courtesy of making Levi a sandwich as well. He watches me from the table, sipping that goddamned coffee, turning the pages of his book, unimpressed.

I sit at the seat furthest from him, devouring my brunch loudly, deliberately. I even put baby carrots in the sandwich—unconventional, but beautifully effective in producing resounding crunching noises that make his left bottom eyelid twitch, almost imperceptibly but evident enough for me to track my progress.

_Crunch. Crunch. Crunch._

He hasn't flipped a single page since I sat down.

Come dinnertime, I drink my orange juice with a straw, only the straw is barely coasting the surface of the juice, granting me the ability to drain it the whole way through with obnoxious, wonderfully obnoxious, slurping sounds. When there's a quarter of the original volume left, I blow bubbles.  _Glug, glug, glug_.

"You're a literal child," he comments.

"You're my legal guardian." I shrug. "You set the bar for maturity. I'm just calibrating myself."

_Glug._

When he leaves his perch temporarily to use the bathroom, I lean into his coffeepot. The addition of my saliva pushes the liquid level just a hair above the halfway mark.

But Levi is a tough opponent. When he returns, he promptly tosses the pot into the sink, along with the dishes I dumped in for him to clean, dishes that, may I add, are smeared to kingdom come with dried-up mayonnaise.

"Classy," he mutters.

I give him a quizzical look. He glares back.

"So you're back in school tomorrow, right?" he asks with something that appears to be  _relief_  in his voice.  _Score one for Mikasa_. "Assuming that we don't get slammed by an eleventh-hour ice age?"

"Indeed," I say, bobbing a tea bag of Earl Grey up and down in my mug. "Why do you ask? Thinking about revoking my driving privilege?"

"Yeah, now that you mention it, why not? Hand over the damn keys," he says, extending his palm. "You're grounded for a month for being an obnoxious shit."

"Nice try."

"I'm serious. Keys."

I shrug. "Good luck finding them."

"Why are you such a brat?" he sighs, kneading his temples. He finally relents, "No, I won't take away your fucking Ferrari this time. I just need to know your schedule because I gotta hop around and get some paperwork figured out. Lawyer shit, hospital shit, funeral stuff, et cetera, et cetera. Also, do I need to fucking pack a lunch for you? Initial the margins of your homework?"

"You take care of your stuff. I'll take care of mine. Easy as that," I inform him.

Levi picks his battles carefully. The ones where he can deliver a good punch, he commits to. Example: this morning. The others where he just ends up exhausted and annoyed, he drops. For me, it's a matter of stamina, and I've been known to have that in spades.

"Cool, I like easy. When do you get home? Ballpark figure."

"Pre-season ends at six…" I pause. Usually, I leave immediately to pick up Dad from work, but now… "I might chill with some… friends. So seven, seven-thirty-ish."

"Do you even have friends?" he asks bluntly. "Aside from the kid from this morning, though it looks like your friendship is experiencing some kinda mid-adolescent crisis?"

Asshole. Calm down, Mikasa, relax. I match his gaze, his cold, calculating, observant gaze that scans my face for any reaction, gauging where the chinks in my armor are. He's found one—or he  _thinks_  he's found one, and he's testing it. Tossing a pebble at it, seeing whether or not I recoil, even in the slightest bit. Experimenting with a spot that he can exploit later on.

"We didn't win the state championship last year because we hate each other," I answer tersely.

" _We_ did. My teammates were a dozen meaty chunks of pure, unabashed moron. Hated them," he says, returning to Stephen King. I can't tell if he gleaned out of me what he wanted. Verification that I'm a recluse? Evidence that all I do is avoid human interaction as much as I possibly can?

"We're the contrary," I lie. "I'll be home around 7:30. There's more casserole in the fridge if you're hungry earlier."

* * *

It's been forty-eight hours since the last time I entered Dad's room.

I'm not sure what to expect—surely not cobwebs and dust covering just about every surface as a sepulchral atmosphere hangs about—but I enter bracing for some sort of jolting impact. No ghouls, no zombies, no monsters. It's just the stuff of a man who's no longer here. A museum exhibit of a previous life.

I walk towards the huge bed, a bed meant for two, and maybe also a small child as well. Now, it holds none. The covers are messy, crumpled into an unmade lump; the pillows are strewn across the ground. He does—he  _did_  that when dreams wracked his sleep, particularly dreams about Mom. Yet he woke up earlier than usual. No morning meltdown. I found him, last Friday, chipper, flipping eggs in the kitchen the way he did for Mom as she sat at the kitchen island, watching him with that soft look in her eyes. No need for me to drag him, kicking and screaming, out of bed. No need for me to shove him, whining and crying, into the shower. No need for me to instruct him to brush his teeth, to brush that disgusting stench of Heinecken from his breath.

In the closet, a shrine to his days playing for UNC. His jerseys hang along the racks, faded and browned. His old lacrosse sticks stowed away in a barrel container. His dresser seems just about ready to explode, stuffed beyond capacity with wadded up, unfolded clothing. I find ties that he claimed that he lost, shirts that used to nicely compliment his once-lean, once-athletic frame, pants that have recently lost buttons, casualties in the war against his bulging belly.

The television is still on. It's muted, but there's a Bears game on. Before Mom died, Dad turned our home into a lively thunderdome when the Bears played the Giants. He'd spend the mornings zipping between preparing five different kinds of dip and ensuring the wings didn't char to a crisp, while he kept his phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder, on-call with Carla as she made supermarket runs. The Jaegers would come over, and occasionally, we'd get a noise complaint later in the night.

I go downstairs and return with a box of black trash bags.

After two hours, I've packed the remaining presence of my father into an armada of black, plastic lumps, lumps of garbage. The skins he wore in his life. The objects tracking his decline from gallant husband to pathetic drunkard. Everything filed away. Two by two, I trek downstairs with these trash bags, down the shoveled driveway, and by the trashcans, I dump Dad into the street, leaving him to be erased by the trash trucks coming around tomorrow.

Levi watches me from the couch. Not a word escapes his trap. He had shifted to help me, but one glare froze him to his spot. When I finally shut the garage door and head to the sink to wash my hands, he finally asks, "Shouldn't you pick out something for your father to wear at the funeral?"

"What did he say in his will?" I reply, scrubbing my hands vigorously. Erasing. Cleansing.

"Well, the only thing he mentioned was how he wanted to be buried next to your mother. Everything else, I'm guessing it's up to you."

I pause. The water still running, I turn slowly to Levi. "Everything else?"

"Flowers, funeral, who goes, who doesn't, if you want a pastor or whatever, casket design."

"Why me?"

Levi shrugs, slinging an arm over the back of the couch. "You're his closest relation. I mean, you're his daughter." He watches me for a moment before continuing, "That is, if you're up for it. Technically, if you're not too keen on sorting out these kinda things, which I totally get, all these arrangements are on me—"

"Please," I say immediately.

"Yeah?"

"Please."

"Okay."

"Wait," I say. "Where are they…"

"Keeping him?" Levi finishes for me.

"Yeah."

"Do you really want to know?"

"Just tell me."

"In a big-ass freezer, I'd imagine."

I run my soapy hands under the sink.

* * *

I finally will myself to look at my texts. More than one hundred from just about everyone. I type out " _thx, appreciate it_." Highlight it. Copy.

Historia, who sits next to me in chemistry, texted me about the yellow theme for tomorrow. She was the creator of #prayforAckerman. Paste. Send.

Sasha, who's also a midfielder, told me she wants to take me out for burgers sometime this week. Paste. Send.

Armin, who's editor-in-chief with me, expresses his condolences. He follows up with a " _How are you holding up? Anything I can do for you?"_  I respond with an " _i'm okay, nothing for now._ " And then paste. Send.

Even Annie, our senior captain whom I don't usually see eye-to-eye with, left me something, telling me it's cool if I miss some practices this week. I reply, curtly, " _thx but i'll be there tomorrow."_

To everyone else: Paste. Send.

* * *

I get a call from Eren midway through outlining my history textbook. I'm currently two weeks ahead of schedule.

My phone buzzes to the tune of a Maroon 5 song, "Sunday Morning," aglow with his contact picture—a selfie of the two of us when we were fifteen, brazenly taken on a roller coaster with a selfie stick he snuck onto the ride. He didn't want to cough up ten bucks for one of those photos we could buy at the end of the ride. Really, it's a wonder how his phone made it out of the park, completely unscathed. But to his credit, it was a solid shot. He got it while we were upside-down on a loop, our hair hanging downwards, well,  _upwards_  in the picture, subject to gravity. While I managed just a hint of a smile, his face was inundated in glee, huge ear-to-ear grin splayed across his features.

"I'm sorry," we both say at the exact moment I pick up. What follows is a flustered debacle, each of us trying to talk over the other, apologizing profusely throughout for interrupting the other, only to interrupt one another even more. At last, we both fall silent, locked again in that perpetual game of  _Who Gets to Break the Ice First?_

"I think I should go first," he says quietly, always the one courageous enough to speak first. "I started this whole mess. Mikasa—"

"Wait, Eren," I cut in. "It didn't have to be a mess in the first place. I shouldn't have given you the money. That was just really… I don't know what word to use right now, but it was, well, it was  _weird_."

Quiet on the other end. It hits me. He thinks there's more for me to say. But I don't know how to proceed, I don't know what he wants from me.

"So, yeah," I continue quickly. "That's just not… how we work."

"Is that all?" he says after a long silence.

"What?"

"Are you serious? Is that all?" he repeats, his voice tinged with a sourness that takes me by surprise.

"Eren, what are you saying?"

"You're apologizing for the money. The act of you handing me cash, paying me."

"Well, yeah. That was…  _weird_."

I can feel him on the other end, internally processing that word  _weird_. A lame excuse, a euphemism for something more pressing beneath the surface. It's a word encased in layers upon layers of cowardice, so insulated that it no longer captures the core message that I'm trying to convey. And he can see through the bullshit too. After all, there's no one else who can read me better than him, no doubt about that. Now the question is: will he have the patience to crack open that capsule and translate my bullshit or will he round on me for concocting bullshit in the first place?

"So the reason why things blew up the way they did was solely because you decided to pay me," he states. I can imagine that fist curling, teeth gritting, eyes flickering.

"Are you asking me or are you telling me?"

"Goddammit, you're not even scraping the tip of the iceberg here, Mikasa."

"So you called me to yell at me, huh?" I reply defensively. "I thought you were going to apologize, but it looks like you're just gonna regale me with  _another_  one of your lectures." The rest comes out in a gush, with a force that slipped from my hands, barreling forth, out of my control.

"How can I apologize if you're not even aware of the fucking problem?" he shoots back. "Actually, let me rephrase that. You know  _exactly_  what the problem is here, but you're too scared to admit it. That's what you do. When things get hard, you block everything out, you ignore that there's something fucked-up in the first place. Yeah, maybe that helps you, yeah, maybe that makes you cope on the outside, but  _that's not good_ , Mikasa. It's so toxic to bottle things up like that. You need to talk about things. Tell people. Trust people. Let your friends help you, for fuck's sake. I dunno, it seems to me that we're far from friendship right now. Like, paying me? After I've shoveled your goddamned driveway for, like, the past  _four_  winters as a friend? I get the hint: you want nothing to do with me. You can't stand to be near me, and having to spend a night in the same house with me was the worst possible hell for you, I get it. You just don't want to admit it, so I'll just put it out there for you and spare you the inconvenience of saying it:  _we're not friends anymore_. Happy? I did the dirty work for you. Now I can stop wondering every day what exactly our relationship is because now we have a great, fucking label to put on it. We're  _Not Friends_ —"

"Eren, stop." I want to cry. I want an involuntary outpouring. But I clench my fist. I focus. I keep my voice steady. "That's not what I want. You don't understand—"

"We both know that's entirely untrue. There's no one else on this planet who knows you better than I do. Not even yourself. We both know that. Let's face it: you  _suck_  with processing your own feelings. You ignore things. You revise your own history. You omit things, hack out huge chunks of your life because, like I said, it's  _inconvenient_."

"You wouldn't understand because you didn't have to deal with what I went through," I spit back, hotly. If not tears, then anger. "This is what I can't  _stand_  about you sometimes, Eren. You presume you can empathize with me all the time, when that's really just not true. If you had to shoulder all this baggage, you'd wanna not remember certain things too.

"I wouldn't let it eat away at me like it did to you," he says. "You're a completely different person now, Mikasa. Where the fuck did my best friend go?"

"Has it ever occurred to you that I might not be the source of this problem?"

"Trust me, I have equal fault in this too, but at least I'm owning up to my fault. Listen, all I'm saying is that just make sure you find someone you can trust. Someone on the lax team, Armin maybe,  _anyone_. And unload some of the shit you're dealing with on them. It's actually okay to do that! You're not inconveniencing them if they're truly a friend."

Before I can respond, he hangs up, leaving me with a dead tone on the other end.

I need to run. Run away from the tears threatening to emerge from the corners of my eyes. I refuse to cry. I can't.

* * *

The sidewalk leading up to our front porch isn't shoveled.

My sneakers crunch through snow. Ice cracks against the bottoms of my feet. My toes grow numb from the cold.

Cold, numb.

 _Dead_.

_In a big-ass freezer, I'd imagine._

My heart races with each step, with each crunch. Stop it. Oh, God. Stop it. I'm running across the snow, wincing with each crunch. Each cold, numb, dead step.

Only until I reach the driveway, solid, sturdy black in the world of white, can I finally breath again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lemme know what y'all thought! Thx for all the honest reviews from the last chapter! Got some great insight from you guys and pls keep the feedback coming!! <3


	7. Dead On Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evanston. Levi's back. A day of errands takes him a walk down a lonely memory lane.

**Levi**

Due to recent developments, I'm no longer eligible for another surprise breakfast platter. I come downstairs to an empty table, spotless of even the lousiest crumb. No more eggs, bacon, and waffles. And so the war rages on.

I settle for some breakfast cereal and an overripe banana while I get a pot of coffee going in the Keurig. The time is 8:30AM. Mikasa mentioned tersely last night that she had something going on in the morning—it was newspaper board or something—so she'd be out early.

Outside, it's still mind-numbingly cold, as is always the case with the godforsaken Chicago area. When Hanji kidnapped me just two days ago, I didn't have a chance to grab my coat. Swearing, I wrap the navy bathrobe I found in the guest room closet tightly around me as I make my way down the twenty-meter driveway, trekking for what seems like miles through the frigid, whip-like winds.

Piled up along the edge of the driveway are more than a dozen black bags, waiting to be scooped up by the trash truck. I kick at one of them with one of my sneakers, and to my surprise, I'm met by a rattling sound. Upon closer inspection, it's a familiar sight: through a hole in the worn bottom of the bag, the handle of a melancholy lacrosse stick peers out. Along its handle, I spot a feared name in the National Collegiate Athletic Association: UNC-Chapel Hill. The demonic Tarheels. The initials:  _M. A._

I hesitate, wondering if I should take the lacrosse sticks back inside. Hell, I wonder if I should take all of it back inside. I wonder if I should ask her again if she's one hundred percent sure about tossing all this stuff, maybe at a later date, when the reality has sunken in. But it's not my conversation to have. She's certainly no normal sixteen-year-old, that Mikasa; for someone who's lost her dad, she's an oddly stoic. I mean, I'm not melancholy over the fact that I haven't been able to play Dad yet, sitting next to her on her bed, rubbing her back, telling her to let it all out. Thank God. But at the same time, that impassive face, that impenetrable steel—it's frankly very disconcerting.

A mess tumbles out of the mailbox when I open it. Cards, flowers, chocolates, stuffed animals. Each and every one of them addressed to her. I have to lift up the flap of the bathrobe to create a pouch in order to carry it all.

Behind me, a car honks. Three loud, long blares.

A hideous russet station wagon slowly rolls towards me, seemingly  _throbbing_. Inside, an over-exaggerated bass pounds from the speakers. The vehicle's side doors are freckled with dents of various shapes and sizes. Behind the wheel, a familiar face leers at me. Bobbing his head idiotically to his trash music as usual, it's the local asshole. Eren was his name. Beside him, another kid with a shaved head and huge, house fly-ish eyes repeatedly does that "dab" thing to the music. The window slowly creaks open, and in that moment, I can empathize with that Greek chick Pandora. I can relate to the sheer horror she must've felt as she watched unholy creatures of sin and vice surge out of her goddamned box, free to terrorize the world to kingdom come—only in my case, these unholy creatures take the form of Kanye West lyrics. An overpowering smell of AXE body spray seeps out from inside with traces of a familiar scent that can only be weed.

"Hey, Kangaroo Jack!" Eren hollers over the noise, honking twice more for good measure. "Yo, Leroy!"

"It's Levi."

"Hey, Leroy!" the kid beside Eren chimes in, hiccuping stupidly. "Yo, I like your bathrobe! Where'd you get it, man? The midget section at IKEA?!" He howls at his own joke.

"Connie, goddammit, shut up," Eren growls. He returns his attention to me. "Listen, Kangaroo Jackass! My mom's coming over in like an hour, so be on your best fucking behavior, okay? If you go berserk-o on her with a hairbrush or whatever, your ass is dead, you hear me?"

"He's gonna rip your balls off and make you eat them!" the kid beside him adds, erupting into a fit of snorting giggles at his own  _SNL_ -worthy comment.

"Shut the fuck up, will you?" Eren snaps.

"Why's she coming over?" I ask calmly, suppressing my desire to head into the garage and return with a baseball bat.

"She busted butt making food for you guys!" Eren yells, competing with Mr. West. Signing off with a middle finger, he rolls up the window, thankfully sealing in the cultural garbage.

As the station wagon rumbles away, I stoop down into the snow and with my bare hands, I pack some ice into a tight ball. (Know that this is no easy task, considering that all the while, I'm carrying a Hallmark's entire catalog in this fucking terry cloth marsupial pouch.) A flick of the wrist and I send the snowball flying. It splats against the back windshield.

The car honks irritably before plowing through the STOP sign at the end of the street.

* * *

Two hours later, she doesn't even knock to enter. My ears perk up to the sound of the garage door mysteriously opening on its own, and then, lo and behold, in blusters Hurricane Carla with a stack of aluminum foil-wrapped casserole dishes threatening to topple from her arms.

"Did Eren tell you I was coming or did he forget like usual?" she demands, depositing the tower of food on the kitchen island.

"Oh, he told me alright—"

To which she cuts in immediately, "Did he sound like a total brat when he said it? I bet he did. You can be dead honestly with me, Levi. He's been an absolute demon for the past twelve hours, I have no idea what hormones are raging in that head of his right now, but I don't have the damn patience to deal with it. Even the dog can't put up with it anymore."

These Jaegers are so uncannily  _alike_  that they almost seem fictional. Aside from the color of his eyes, the local asshole seems to have inherited every other drop of Carla's DNA pool. He's the spitting image of his mother. Standing before me is the tree from which that annoying apple fell, the old block from which crumbled that pissant chip, and, dare I say, the bitch responsible for that raging sonuva—

"Goddamn," she says, swinging the refrigerator door wide open. "This is actually clean? Kudos to you guys. This makes ours look like a radioactive wasteland."

"Well, my definition of  _brat_  might not exactly coincide with yours," I answer carefully. I really have no intention triggering this time-bomb of a mother—at least not today.

She laughs bitterly. "Try me. Shitty attitude, doesn't have the courtesy to turn down the music when he's talking to you, tries to mask the smell of his marijuana adventures by drowning it in body spray but in reality, everyone knows what's  _really_  up—to me, that's poster-child brat right there."

"Congrats, we're on the same page." I pour her a cup of coffee, and to mutual suffering, we toast.

She drains the cup in a single swig. Impressive, even by my own standards. Dark crescent moons cling beneath her eyes. Several wisps of gray hair frame her angular face. Her gaze darts to the clock constantly, bracing for the next responsibility barreling her way. The way she waves her empty cup for a refill, her wrist tired, slack, yet still chugging along—it all screams "working mom." Perhaps even "working  _single_  mom."

"I guess I oughta apologize on his behalf," Carla grumbles, taking this second cup more slowly. "It's not pleasant starting off your morning by putting up with that bullshit. And don't get me started on that jackass friend of his, Connie. Oh, and—" She pins me down with a serious look. "—this stays between you and me, right?"

"Don't sweat it," I reply. "I've had  _far_  rougher mornings. This is nothing."

"Oh, right. What were you again? Some kind of war correspondent?"

"Not quite my official title but more or less."

"I think I've read your stuff before. Wait, it was that book with Edward Smith or something? About third-world sex slavery?"

"Erwin Smith, and yep, that's the one."

She eyes me keenly. "I imagined you to be taller. Double your current height. Less of a tummy pooch and more active." Before I even have a chance to construct some form of a retort in my head, she goes on, "So what do you do now?"

Instinct kicking in, my lips form the first vowel to  _maintenance engineer_ , but I internally kick myself. I scrounge for an answer, ever aware of her probing gaze on me.  _Ex-maintenance engineer_  just sounds pathetic, so I stick with the cop-out answer for all struggling, mid-life-crisis-ridden journalists: "I do a bit of freelance stuff here and there."

She has that oh-so-familiar look of an informed reader, someone whose eyes swept across those godforsaken tabloids but took it all with a grain of salt. And now she's trying to read me. She's trying to collect her own data and piece it all together to decide whether or not I actually ran into the  _Tribune_  building buck-naked and proceeded to assault someone with a doorknob. (For the record, I could've won a libel suit for that, but in order to sue the pants off of someone, you need to cough up a few grand for a lawyer, money which I had no possible manner of acquiring because, well, let's face it: $13.50 an hour puts on a low cap on how much of a whiny bitch you can be.)

"Oh, neat. What are you working on right?" Carla asks, carefully trying to peel off another layer.

I fall back on a familiar thread of bullshit. "It's an idea still hot off the press, but it's a piece comparing the moral values of blue-collar janitor workings with those of the white-collar Wall Street 1%. Basically, I'm trying to analyze the moral decline that comes with climbing the work ladder." Hanji snorts loudly in the back of my mind.

"Interesting," Carla says, after a long moment. Her radar tuned so finely that even the tiniest signs—a minor tone inflection, a slight wrinkle of the brow, a flinch of the hand—can give her troves of information about a person. Nothing gets past her. An her mind, she is diagnosing me with a condition in which my entire being is composed of pure bullshit. The "benefit of the doubt" ship has sailed.

Before she can disembowel the inner workings of my psyche any further, I pivot. "And what about you? What do you do?"

"I'm an OR nurse," she says. "But hopefully, I can tack on another set of credentials in a few years. I'm back in school, trying to be a nurse anesthetist."

I whistle. "Your husband can basically retire and be a trophy dad once you start getting  _that_  paycheck."

"No way, he lacks my patience. He'd be so fed up with Eren to the point of draining the kid's college fund and spending it on a hut ten thousand miles away in New Zealand." Twisting her wedding ring with her thumb, she laughs uneasily before flashing me a grin. "And hey, this is the twenty-first century! It's considered lame to rely on your husband so much."

"What does he do?" I inquire. My turn. I can play this game too because I smell a rat, from the way she fidgets with that ring, from that fake, unnatural smile of hers, from this overly giddy, happy-go-lucky attitude—she's compensating for something.

"He's a trauma surgeon. All those nasty, gory cases go right to him."

"Oh, so you guys work in the same hospital?"

"Not anymore. I'm still right here in Northwestern, but he's down at the UChicago Medical Center." She, too, is familiar with the art of the pivot. "So tell me, how's Mikasa holding up?"

"I mean, we're adjusting," I say.

"Adjusting well or adjusting poorly?" she asks with an amused laugh.

"I'd say it's somewhere in the middle, as most adjustments are."

"Listen, I'm just gonna cut to the chase," Carla says, putting her cup down on the granite counter. "It's awkward, isnt' it? I'm guessing she holes up in her room for a lot of day, doesn't seem particularly interested in you, probably has only said about twenty words since you've arrived, right"

"Gotta say, you hit the nail on the fucking head."

"I gotta fly in a sec, but lemme give you a tip. Rearrange some of this furniture. She's gonna see a lot of ghosts if everything's still in the same place. And also, try to get her out of the house as much as you can."

* * *

Confession of the hour: I don't fucking know how to plan a funeral for a man I don't know, let alone plan a funeral itself.

I wonder if the funeral home guy goes home every night with a sore, aching face. His cheek muscles have got to be absolutely shot from holding this droopy, somber expression that hasn't twitched  _once_  since my arrival. He wears a miserable brown suit with a mismatched tie, and I debate whether or not I should inform him that his fly is undone. I decide against it. His pale, leathery hand flips through the catalog, while he informs me in his monotone that brown is a good color to choose, especially if we're burying Mikasa's dad in April, when Chicago's annual ice age takes a breather. His plump neck jowls cushion that saggy frown of his, bulging and constricting with each word, as he asks me all these questions, picking my brain for whether my second cousin would prefer open casket or closed casket, how many people he'd like to attend his funeral, which delusional clergyman he'd like to administer the rites. When I shrug and reply that I don't know yet, he disappears into his backroom for what feels like days and finally returns with an inch-thick catalogue and the death certificate. Still droopy and still somber, he shuffles me to the door and tells me to come back when I'm ready and to have a good day.

My new residence is just outside of the Northwestern campus bubble. I can get everywhere I need to go by Mikasa's rusty, old bike after pumping some air back into its flat tires. Sometimes, I deliberately take a longer route, giving myself an excuse to wind through some familiar paths I took when I got my master's. I pass some lecture halls that deprived me of many good nights of sleep, the coffee shop that gave me sizable frequent-flyer discounts, as well the house that Isabel, Furlan, and I lived in. Pausing by the mailbox, I watch their ghosts. Through the front window, I can see Furlan seated at the dinner table, practicing his newscaster's diction, while the shadows of Isabel dance about, teasing him ruthlessly whenever he screws up. Upstairs, our three bedrooms that we seldom used because we spent most of our time in the living room, crashed on the couches after watching Letterman. Whatever new grad students who decided to shack up here seemed to have painted over Isabel's mailbox art with a solid red hue. Furlan's bike, usually chained to the front porch, has disappeared.

The Northwestern Memorial Hospital lobby is a muddled smog of colors. Red "Congrats!" balloons hover over a small crowd encircling a pink newborn. Blue shadows envelope grieving family in the corner. Oversized green scrubs flutter as a lanky, wound-up medical student scuttles past, files spilling out of his arms. A black trash bag stretches in protest when I exit, lugging behind me a bag of a dead man's belongings. A leather wallet, a black belt, a pair of loafers that stomped down on the accelerator, determined to run that red light. I pocket the wallet. Everything else, I dump into the trash on my way out.

* * *

Four floors up, in the intensive care unit, a year ago, Erwin Smith finally met his match in the form of congestive heart failure.

A year ago, around 2:30AM on a Thursday, I hurtled into this very lobby and up the elevator, and at a full sprint, I barged into the intensive care unit. The nurse herded me into a room, where  _he_  laid. Before his bedside, amidst the beeping machines, I stood frozen to the spot, as if icy hands had reached into my brain held a leash on my nerves. On the heart monitor, a green line hiccuped slowly. My eyes couldn't stray from the sight before me. His skin was faded and white, with the blotches of impending death pooling along the bottoms of his wrists. His neck was stretched backwards, his mouth wide with that godforsaken tube shoved down his throat, his eyelids partially open but unseeing. Those days upon days of floating on sedation left a coat of bristles along his mouth, along his chin, along his neck. I couldn't tear my gaze away from this  _insult_.

This was an insult to Erwin Smith. An insult to the life he paved. An insult to the lives he affected.

Flatline.

I screamed. I thrust my hand towards the monitor. I demanded why no one was twitching a muscle. I cried. I told them I didn't give a shit about the DNR. Do not resuscitate. I told them I didn't give a shit. Even though my signature is chained in ink along that dotted line. Teach me, I begged them. I pushed past a nurse. I went to his side. I put my hands on his sternum.

How the fuck does CPR work? Teach me.

We can't.

_Teach me._

It's no use.

_Goddammit, teach me._

Time of death: 2:46.

* * *

Oh, have I been waiting for this moment. My phone rumbles over the counter, and Satan's current reincarnation flashes her pearly-whites at me from the glowing screen.

"I fucking hate you," I intone over her squeals when our FaceTime call connects.

She's doing that  _thing_  again. The thing that might just cast her off into the streets with a roll-up futon strapped to her back. I can see the shelves upon shelves of research equipment behind her. The full-face mask, the full-body scrub suit. She's sitting in front of a biosafety level three fume hood working with chemicals that will burn your hand to the bone, as well as microorganisms and viruses that can terrorize the human body in ways that will make you shit yourself three times over (quite literally)—all while  _FaceTiming_ me. Her face is blurry from the layers of plastic covering encasing her iPhone. Her supervisor is clearly out on a lunch break.

"Soooo, how's it going?" she purrs. "Oh, and hey, look at this—" She flips the camera to the bottles and flasks in the sterile hood in front of her. With her pipette, she squirts something into a plastic dish. "This is altered hepatitis C!"

"Jesus-fucking-Christ, you really shouldn't be calling while you're working with deadly viruses."

"Pshh, it's fine. I'm on a crunch, so I gotta multitask. Don't fret, my friend! I know you're brimming with concern over my well-being, but know that there's not a single dumb little intern in sight, and Moblit won't rat on me to the brass if he doesn't know. "

"What a fine philosophy to live by."

"Agreed. So details, please. What's she like? This girl? Can I come visit this weekend?"

I rub my temples. The words on the legal guardianship packets Hannes left for me in the mailbox are blurring together. "Well, so get this. When that probate court summons me, I need you to pick me up."

"Why?" she demands.

"I'm coming back."

My ears tune out when she squawks in reply. When I sorted through my emails this morning, I realize that there's an out to this whole debacle. My exit takes the form of a probate court hearing, where a judge deems whether or not I'm a suitable legal guardian for Mikasa. A few swear words, a melodramatic outburst, an unkempt appearance, and maybe, just maybe, those tabloids might actually turn out to be a blessing. When everything clacks into place,  _bam_ , my ass will soon be on a bus bound for Chicago, where I'll beg for my old job back—drinking Red Bull with Mike, couch-surfing with no shame, and stewing undisturbed in my own bullshit.

I refuse to be responsible for anyone. Never again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooooo, friends! Thanks so much for the read, and I hope you guys liked it! Sorry this update came out a little slower than usual. Work's been picking up like crazy as of late, so updates might come slower, buuuuut I'll still try to get something out once a week! Keep your eyes peeled on the weekends. Anyways, lemme know what you guys thought in da comments/reviews! Positive/negative/neutral evil/etc feedback is always appreciated!
> 
> ALSO, lemme ask you guys. Take a guess, any guess: Which Kanye song was playing when Eren pulled up?


	8. Goddammit, Eren's Hormones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's zip back two years, before Levi decided to move into town, before things got weird between Eren and Mikasa. It's 2015, and Eren's grappling with a seemingly insurmountable force: his own hormones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Spoilers from Chapter 85 and onwards! If you guys are anime-only, ugh, I'm so sorry, but there's a relationship in here that hasn't quite been unveiled just yet. I mean, you're more than welcome to distract yourselves with that first chapter of "Derailed," which I'll be updating soon!

**Eren**

_two years ago_

Oh, shit. Mayday, mayday. Save our ship.

I don't know how it fucking happened, but this came  _completely_ out of nowhere, rammed into me like a train going at light-speed. What doesn't help at all is that Armin is sitting across from me, smirking like a total bastard and pouring salt directly into the wound.

But before I go into how my life is quickly approaching disaster, I should probably tell you who I am. The name's Eren Jaeger. You might know me as the one freshman on the varsity soccer team, which I should add is no easy feat, especially since I haven't had my growth spurt yet. If you're a loser and don't attend soccer games, I'm the faster midfielder, and my number is 8.

So back to my crisis:

"I told you so," Armin repeats for the seventieth time, rubbing in another handful of salt.

And for the seventieth time, I tell him to screw off.

Armin Arlert is my best friend. We go  _way_  back to elementary school, though he swears we met in preschool, but I have zero memory of that, so I'm going to leave it at Mrs. Kirstein's AM kindergarten class. Even though Armin isn't too great at anything that requires speed or muscle, he's hands-down the smartest guy I've ever met. I'm pretty sure if he actually got his IQ tested, he'd give Einstein, Steve Jobs, and all those other super successful nerds a run for their money.

"You're in denial," he says.

"There's nothing to deny," I snort. "Other than the fact that you're a supportive, empathetic friend."

Armin laughs. "I'm kidding, Eren. Lighten up." He turns serious, and in typical Armin fashion, he whips out a yellow legal pad and a pencil. He taps his chin, deep in thought, before writing a few bullet points on the paper, spinning it around, and sliding it to me.

In large letters, all caps, across the top:  _COMMON SYMPTOMS OF ASSOCIATED WITH DEVELOPING A CRUSH._

"Okay, what the fuck—"

"Symptom number one," he cuts in, pointing with the eraser end of the pencil. "Elevated levels of thought regarding girl. Sound like it applies to you?"

"I mean, she's my lab partner, and we've got a lab report due soon," I admit. "And it's a big grade, so… yeah, I guess."

Armin nods, taking in my words carefully. He scribbles a note. I crane my head forward to read: ' _Answer essentially indicates a yes.'_  He draws a big, glaring check mark next to the bullet point.

"Dude, there's no way this is an accurate test. You're pulling this out of your ass—"

"Symptom number two," Armin continues, shifting the eraser one point down. "You look forward to moments together."

I snort. "It's hard to look forward to doing homework, even if your stupid hypothesis is true." Every night, she comes to my house to crank out some math problems, which is a blessing because I otherwise wouldn't do them.

His pencil scrawls:  _Avoids question, but response basically affirms statement._

"Okay, fuck off. I'm going home," I say. I shovel all the chem papers we ignored this afternoon into my backpack. From the corner of my eye, I can see him watching me. He's smiling that weird smile of his where he knows something, like he's pried into my mind, pulled out the truth, and now he's rolling it around his hands, as if it's a lump of Play-Doh. "What?" I challenge when that smile doesn't go away after a good minute.

"You  _so_  have a crush on her," he says.

"You are  _so_  full of shit," I answer.

"Debatable, but what's not debatable are your ears."

"What about my ears?"

"Red as a fire engine," he chirps.

* * *

Three nights a week, I get the house all to myself because Mom has to work overtime and shadow a nurse-anesthetist for CRNA school. I know what you might be thinking: Empty house. No parents. Beer in the basement.  _Ragers_.

Good try.

Call it what you want, but sometimes, I worry about my mom's gray hairs. There's something going on between her and Dad, and I don't like it. I don't remember the last time they've had a real conversation, let alone been in the same room together, because their schedules don't match up whatsoever. Mom works day shifts here in Evanston, so she sleeps during the night. Dad works night shifts all the way in Chicago, so he sleeps during the day.  _Where_  he sleeps is another story. On the off-chance he actually comes home, he's back during the day when I'm at school and Mom's at work. By the time we get home, he's off to another shift, leaving some pasta in the fridge, as if that makes everything totally okay.

But usually, he makes some half-assed excuse about how my half-brother Zeke needs a good dose of fatherly guidance, which is code for:  _Zeke is snorting crack, swimming in the debt, and dealing with another break-up—oh, and also his uber-religious mom is having a panic attack about all this._

It's raining tonight. Whenever Mom can't make it for dinner, she encourages me to go order some pizza, but tonight, I'm perfectly cool with scarfing down a few bowls of microwavable mac-and-cheese and glowering at these quiz results. According to Buzzfeed, I have a 100% chance of being crush-positive. But again, Buzzfeed isn't the most reliable source of information, so I click off my phone, shove it into the deepest recesses of the couch, and flip on some ESPN. I can't stay awake through football, I'm not in the mood for hockey, and I can't find a good soccer game streaming live. I could do some homework, but if I'm planning on falling asleep before 8PM, I might as well flip the football back on.

I flop back onto the couch and stare at the ceiling. Out of nowhere, my dog Dusty clambers beside me, and I rest my legs on top of his fluffy back.

I have a thing for her.

Maybe.

Emphasis on maybe.

It's not as if this is some asteroid hitting me at full impact. Or at least, it really shouldn't be. I mean, crushes are a natural thing. That, I can accept. But  _who_  I happen to crush on? That, I plan on fighting every step of the way.

This girl, I can't crush on. I really can't. That would wreck everything, three times over. We've basically grown up together, and if we get caught in some funky business, all those years of friendship are going taking a one-way trip to the shredder. And speaking of which, if we grew up together, shouldn't this crush phase have happened, like,  _way_  earlier? Why, out of all the possible goddamned times, did it happen to spring up  _now_?

Obviously, my brain is screwing with me. Whenever Dad thinks I'm being a pain-in-the-ass, he doesn't yell at me. Instead, he channels his inner doctor and pins the blame on  _Eren's Hormones_. "Eren's Hormones, stop being a smart-aleck and wash the dishes!" He thinks these stupid jokes smooth over the tension in the household. Well, two can play at this game:  _Fuck you_ , Eren's Hormones. Stop screwing around.

My phone rings. When I pick it up and see who's calling, my hands fumble, and the iPhone tumbles out of my hand, disappearing into the crack beneath the couch. Swearing, I reach down there, sweeping around for the damned thing, but by the time my fingers make contact, the ringtone has already sent her to voicemail. I frantically dial again, but it looks like she dialed right as I did, and our calls are bouncing off one another. I suck in a breath, and this time, I let her dial. But, lo and behold, guess who's thinking the same exact thing?

I finally settle for sending her a nice, simple text, but that  _thing_  is happening again. I set this picture as her contact. It was from last summer, and she was eating a slice of watermelon. Watermelon being messy by default, I tried to snag an awful pic of her, awful as in watermelon juice dripping from her mouth and watermelon chunks mashed in her teeth, yet her being her, she managed to somehow warp the camera and look… okay, I'll say it, so sue me, go ahead, fuck you, go choke on a dick by the way—basically, she still looked really cute. Ever since this whole  _thing_  began, I can't stop staring at the fucking picture. (Don't get me started on the dozens of selfies she snapped to spam my storage space, which, come to think of it, I should probably delete to free up my phone—eventually.)

Before Armin's voice starts going on replay in my head, singing " _I told you so, I told you so, I told you so,"_ she calls again, and this time, I actually pick up.

"Hey," I say, trying my hardest to steamroll flat the jitters in my voice.

"Hey, finally," she answers in that soft voice of hers. "What are you doing right now?"

"Nothing. You?"

"We should watch  _The Daily Show_  tonight."

"When do we not watch  _The Daily Show?_ "

"Did you finish your math homework?"

"Oh my God, you don't have to remind me every night."

"You have a C, and you complain about it all the time, when the solution is to do your homework, yet you don't do anything about it."

"You nag more than my mom does."

"Do you need help?"

"Is that an offer?"

"It expires in five, four, three, two—"

"My house?"

"Can we?" We haven't gone to her house for months. Her dad is going through some kind of mid-life crisis, and Mikasa says we should give him space to let the crisis run its course.

"Yeah, Mom's not home yet, so we get the house to ourselves too."

"Why does that matter?"

I can feel my ears growing hot. "Uh… more privacy for… studying, I guess. She won't, um, annoy us like usual, ya know."

"Okay, I'll be over in five."

* * *

All right, all right, it's confession time. I don't actually have a C in algebra. Truth is, I'm not  _that_  terrible at math. I might not have Dad's genius genes, but that doesn't mean idiocy is a part of Mom's DNA pool.

Anyways, remember that girl I was telling you guys about?

Well, as it turns out, she makes this face when she works on stuff like math problems. She tilts her head a certain way that makes you realize that she's got a  _ton_  of eyelashes, and she  _really_  focuses, as in her eyebrows get scrunched up and her eyes go pitch-dark, until she figures the problem out, and finally, her face lights up like a Christmas tree.

"What is it?" she asks.

I'm staring. "There's a bug in your hair," I rebound.

"Where?"

I flick at an invisible fly buzzing near the crown of her head. "There you go. It's gone."

Goddammit, Eren's Hormones.

"Thanks, so do you get how we got to this answer?"

I realize I  _can't_  make direct eye contact with her anymore. Which freaks me out. A few months ago, this wouldn't even been an issue, but now, whenever her eyes meet mine, I find myself skittering for something else to focus on, like a faraway light, or a clock, or a nonexistent insect.

"Eren?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's the slope, right?"

"You okay?" she asks, cocking her head in concern. She's wearing pajama pants and a lacrosse team T-shirt. Her black hair shines under the kitchen light, and a few long strands drop over her face. She pushes them aside with a brush of her hand. "Ew, I need a haircut."

_No, you really don't_ , I'm thinking, yet what comes out of my mouth is: "Yeah, long hair can be really annoying, huh?"

As we work through the problem set, subtle things about her start to stand out to me, clear as day. Her hand grips her pencil in a clumsy way, yet her handwriting still comes out flowy and pretty. She sips at her water bottle, endlessly. It's one of those Gatorade squirt bottles, so whenever she takes a gulp, the plastic mouthpiece wheezes as air flows back into the bottle. She chews on her bottom lip when she's deep in thought.

We head over to the living room once we finish the last problem. As it turns out, Dusty has straight-up passed out on his half of the couch. Mikasa tells me not to sweat it when I try to wake him up, so we settle for squeezing close together on the unoccupied half. The entire left side of her body presses against the entire right side of my body.

"Dude, are you comfortable? I can literally just give my dumb dog a kick, and problem solved," I insist, but she reaches over me to grab the remote. Her hair smells like apple shampoo.

"No biggie," she answers, flipping on the TV. She reaches over to rub Dusty's ears. "It's cozy."

I can't pay attention to what's going on. Not with her this close to me. Every else numbs and blurs together—the opening sequence of  _The Daily Show_ , the sound of Trevor Noah's welcome, the roar of the audience. The only thing I can focus on is her, right next to me. The smell of apples. Her warmth.

Which is should be fucking annoying because I'm missing out on a good show.

Even though I'm laughing, I'm not laughing at this kickass episode, but instead I'm laughing at the way she's giggling and snorting like a lunatic. It's a side of her that she keeps under wraps in public, but here, she doesn't give a damn. She buries her head into my arm when she can't contain a bubbly string of chuckles, as if she's embarrassed by her own laugh.

When commercials come on, we launch into asshole mode, where we criticize every little thing that annoys us. How that guy's teeth are so white they could function as road surface markings. How  _every_ single As Seen on TV product turns out to be $19.99. How many takes were needed to nail this nauseatingly giddy family shot. And when Trevor Noah's face reappears on screen, she's laughing at the jokes again, and I'm laughing at her again.

And it's just easy. And nice. And awesome.

The Moment of Zen comes on. We have our last laugh. The credits roll.

"Colbert?" she suggests, stretching her long legs over the coffee table.

Something's off, but I can't quite place it. She usually heads home at 11:30PM sharp, but I shrug and flip to CBS. "Don't wake me up if I fall asleep."

"How can you fall asleep? It's Colbert?"

"Shardis made me run an extra fucking mile today," I tell her, yawning.

"Did you backtalk him again?" she chides.

"Do I even need to answer that question?"

"Sasha still has PTSD when he covered Coach Rico last week."

"Oh, yeah. We heard  _all_  about it."

"Did you?"

"Let's just say he mentions a 'Potato Girl' a ton now. Does she actually eat baked potatoes during warm-up?"

"Yep."

"Um, why?"

"She gets hungry otherwise. Her metabolism is off the charts."

"But why during warm-up? Like, can't she time it a little better?"

"Each to their own, I guess."

"Fair enough"

We're quiet through this round of commercials. I reach for the knit blanket folded up on the coffee table and drape it across our knees and shoulders.

"Does your mom still punish you by making you knit things?" she asks me, wriggling under the blanket to make herself more comfortable.

"Exhibit A," I answer, pointing my chin at the blanket. "Except, guess what?"

"What?"

"Whenever she finds my stash, it's the same grind, only she makes me  _crochet_  now, and if it's messy, she still makes me unravel the whole thing, like the  _whole_ thing, not just to the part I screwed up, and then I have start over. Lemme tell you, the worst time of the year is around Christmastime I get in trouble for the stupidest things, like rolling my eyes at her or saying words like  _hell_  or  _damn_ , and for like the whole month of December, I'm basically living in a sweatshop because she makes me do sweaters and mittens and laptop covers and shit as gifts for her friends."

"This is pretty, though," she comments, running her fingers along the pattern. "I still wear that scarf you gave me all those years ago."

"That thing?" I scoff. " _That_ , let me tell you, was a nightmare. Guess who had to start from square one  _four_  fucking times?"

"You should teach me how to knit. And crochet."

I snort. "Sorry, but no there's no way in hell I'm doing more needlework than necessary. I already can feel the carpal tunnel settling in. Ask Mom."

"How's she been?" she asks quietly. "I haven't seen her around. Your dad too."

"I dunno," I say with a sigh. "It's just… weird. Ever since Zeke started going off the rails, Dad's been spending more time with that side of the family tree. Mom doesn't like it, but she doesn't say anything, but you know Mom, how even if clams up, she doesn't  _really_  clam up."

"Yeah, your mom's a really honest person."

"Yep, she's doing that thing where she slides in these little comments about Dad's ex-wife, and when I ask her about it, she pretends she didn't say anything. And then when I bug her like four more times, she gives in and vents to me. It's kinda funny."

"What's she like, your, uh… Diana was her name, right?"

"Almost, it's Dina. Um, well, she was really nice to me the few times I've met her, but like, it's still awkward because I'm kind of a walking, breathing reminder that her ex-husband is banging another woman."

She wrinkles her face. "Eren, why."

"Okay, okay, sorry. But yeah, she's similar to Mom in that she  _really, really_  stands by her beliefs, except her beliefs are like the polar opposite of Mom's. You know how Mom was like a classic Cali girl, really free-wheeling and hippy-ish, when she was our age? Dina grew up in Oklahoma, and she doesn't like how Mom and I sometimes swear with each other and how we don't really go to church every Sunday."

"Oh, damn."

"Yeah, she's pretty strict on Zeke, which drives her nuts when he acts the way he does."

"What about him? What's he like?"

I tell her the story of how one time, when I was eight, we tried having a Thanksgiving with both halves of Dad's family at Dina's house in Chicago. Mom, having too much to drink, ended up getting into an argument with Dina over Obamacare. While Dad tried to prevent more glasses of wine from spilling onto Dina's carpet, Zeke pulled me into his room to show me some "cool stuff."

Ten years my senior, Zeke was in college at the time, studying politics. He actually inherited Dad's genius genes and landed a spot at Berkeley, where he got into marijuana. Zeke rifled through his closet until he found a Tupperware container, and reaching inside, he pulled out two brownies, one for me, another for himself. We talked about Star Wars for a good hour while our moms duked it out in the dining room.

Things got really deep after we ran out of Jedi to discuss, so Zeke started telling me about how he didn't get his mom sometimes. He asked me a lot of questions about my own mom, and being a eight-year-old, I had trouble understanding what he was getting at, which was either due to A) his complicated manner of speaking or B) the weed brownie he fed me. When he started talking about how he kinda appreciated socialism and how his mom lashed out at him, telling him he wasn't a true American, I started getting sleepy, and Zeke let me take a nap in his bed.

When I woke up, I was back home in Evanston, in my own bed. I never saw Zeke again after that whole Thanksgiving incident, except in glimpses on social media. He dropped out of law school and spends his days posting a lot of hipster-ish city pics, and it looks like he's part of a grunge revival band.

"Do you talk to him often? Zeke?"

"Not really. We're like in totally different generations, and he's kinda a mess right now. Hey, look. Colbert's on."

We watch the opening monologue for a while, until I suddenly feel a pressure against my shoulder, and to my shock, she's leaning her head against me. Before I know it, she's slumped next to me, snoring quietly.

The garage door rumbles open, signalling Mom's arrival. When she enters, her keys jingling, I twist around and put a finger to my lips, followed by a slicing motion across my neck. Mom rolls her eyes and tiptoes over.

"Is that Mikasa?" she whispers, standing over us in her blue hospital scrubs.

I nod.

Oh, right. By the way, that's the girl's name. Mikasa Ackerman. It probably sounds a little strange, but that's because her mom's Japanese-American and her dad's white, so I guess they wanted the best of both worlds in her name.

"Is she sleeping over?"

I shrug.

"Is she supposed to be sleeping with you? Like in your bed?"

"Mom! What the hell? We're just friends!" I sputter. Mikasa mumbles something in her sleep. "Either way, wouldn't that weird you out?"

"Seems like it weirds you out more than it weirds me out," Mom says with an annoying smile. "Are you sure about being just friends?"

Good question. But I answer, "One-hundred percent."

With a shove, Mom wakes up Dusty. She shoos him away, and he slinks irritably towards his bed at the far corner of the living room. I remove myself from the couch, careful not to wake up Mikasa. I wedge a pillow under her head, swing her legs across the couch, and cover her with the blanket. Mom is still smiling that annoying smile.

"What?" I demand when we slip into the kitchen.

"Nothing," she replies.

"Whatever you're thinking,  _you're wrong_. Nothing happened."

"If you say so."

"You're worse than Armin, I swear to God."

"Oh, so I'm on the same page as Armin?"

"Good night, Mom."

"Hey, before you go off and have dreams about her, is her dad cool with her staying over?"

"She never said," I answer, hesitating.

Mom pulls at her side ponytail, a sign that she's uncomfortable. "I'm going to assume so because there's another car in their driveway. A silver Nissan."

My heart sinks down into my gut. It's happening again. "Oh, geez. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Mom lets out a long sigh. She bites her lower lip, figuring out a way to tactfully say an unpleasant thought. "Let's just say that even if you're blackout drunk, there's really no excuse to not close your curtains while you… you know."

"Shit. You saw?"

"I have a bad feeling about this. Anyways, you might want to walk her home tomorrow morning when she wakes up. You know, be there for her."

* * *

The silver Nissan is still parked in the driveway the next morning.

Something stormy brews behind Mikasa's eyes when she circles the unfamiliar car, like she's a lioness observing her prey. Inside, there's something from the dry-cleaner's hanging in the backseat. A pack of cigarettes and a crumbled burger wrapper are jammed into the center console.

Her fingers punch the keycode to her garage door, each number a bullet. The door groans open.

"Thanks for walking me," she tells me. In Mikasa-speak:  _Don't follow me._

"You sure?" I ask, nervously rubbing the back of my neck.

"Yeah. Thanks, Eren." In other words:  _Go home._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hellooooo! Hi friends, it's been a while, but finally, as I promised a few chapters back, we get a little glimpse into Eren's POV in this whole story via a blast to the past through his eyes. Gotta say, it's pretty fun letting him take the narrative wheel because I tend to write my journals in a similar kind of voice—which, for me, is a good and a bad thing because on one hand, it feels more natural to write, but on the other hand, a little too much Kar might leak out into Eren's voice and ultimately warp his character a bit. Let me know if you guys see any not-so-Eren blips in there, and I'll try to clean up the narration a bit. :P
> 
> Okay, so I think I owe you guys a little insight as to why Mikasa's been acting the way she has been in the previous chapters. A few of y'all pointed out two huge red-flags in Mikasa's behavior: A) she's detaching herself from her support circle (i.e. Eren), and B) the tight bond we're used to seeing between Eren and her doesn't seem to exist in this fic. This might sound like a cop-out, but ALL WILL BE REVEALED SOON! I'm planning on using Eren's POV to lay out some history for a few chapters. His account will shed some light as to why Mikasa's been isolating herself from everyone, so I hope you guys get your answers. Don't worry, we'll get to hear more our favorite Ackermans soon, but for now, Eren gets the stage.
> 
> Oh, and as for that Kanye song Eren and Connie were obnoxiously blasting in the car last chapter, it was "Monster." Good try, though, for those of you guys who threw forth a guess!
> 
> I'm gonna sign off soon, but wow, THANKS a million for the meaningful reviews and comments you've been leaving me. Whenever I see those notifications from AO3 or FF in my inbox, I just feel the motivation to sit my ass down behind my computer and write, so thank you guys for making this fic possible. Again, if you guys have ANY thoughts/feedback/opinions, don't hesitate to share them below! Any parts that didn't make sense, some jokes that fell flat on your ears (because I do have a shitty sense of humor, oops), some words that just seemed out of place—please let me know! You guys help me grow as a writer, and I cannot thank you all enough for it. With that, see you guys next chapter!


	9. Silver Nissan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa's father has taken on a new lover. And she's a total nutcase.

**Eren**

_two years ago_

If there's a new car in the Ackerman driveway, a shitstorm's in the brewing.

We thought Mr. Ackerman would never remarry after Mrs. Ackerman died. She had this nasty sickness called lymphoma, which is when your immune cells go bat-shit crazy and clump into huge life-sucking lumps on your body. Her death hit Mr. Ackerman hard. He spent years just sitting on his front porch in the evenings. He lost interest in hosting summer barbecues, in throwing Super Bowl parties, in going on his evening jogs, and instead, his priorities seemed to be centered on growing a belly grew under his T-shirt. He dedicated his life to filling up the recycling bin with drained beer bottles and waiting for the trash truck to roll around to empty it. That cycle, on constant replay, became his life.

I've only seen Mikasa cry once. She cried that day her mom died, when she had to leave school early to go to the hospital. But she's locked the floodgates shut ever since. At nine years of age, she was basically the caretaker of a forty-year-old infant. A pathetic, whiny, sniveling, self-centered, forty-year-old infant. She had to grow up earlier than the rest of us. She watched YouTube videos to learn how to cook. She experimented with the washing machine and figured out how to do laundry. Eventually, she spent hours Googling how to do taxes.

And in spite of everything, she hasn't bitched about it once.

Even after last year, when her dad met the red Camry.

Its driver was a lady named Janine. Last September, Mikasa came downstairs to find her in Mr. Ackerman's bathrobe, helping herself to Mikasa's cereal. There wasn't much substance to Janine and Mr. Ackerman, aside from keeping Mikasa up late at night (her room and her father's room are right next to each other, separated by a thin wall). But that's when I realized that Mikasa has this face. It's her " _my life sucks, but I'm tough as nails, so I'm going to pretend_ nothing  _is wrong, nothing, look, my hand is steady, steady as a fucking rock_ " face. It doesn't look particularly different from any other typical Mikasa expression, but there's this weird vibe that comes off of her. I can't really explain it, but whenever she's wearing that face, I know immediately.

Janine got bored after a month and stopped coming over every night. Mr. Ackerman went into this downwards spiral, and Mikasa had to buy a second recycling bin. Every Monday, I'd bike past their house to find both blue bins filled to the brim with empty bottles of Heineken. I went with Mikasa to buy new clothes. Buttons have popped off of his old, tight pants.

Around Christmas, a navy sedan appeared. Alison was one of her father's co-workers, and like him, she was also dealing with a mid-life crisis of her own and carried a shitload of baggage with her, which included two divorces, a bankruptcy, and something else Mikasa still won't tell me. She was a total nutcase. Alison always had too much to drink, and she left several puddles of vomit for Mikasa to clean. To make matters worse, Alison threw a lot of hissy fits at Mr. Ackerman. In turn, Mr. Ackerman threw a lot of hissy fits at Mikasa. That was when Mikasa started crashing on our couch, particularly on nights before big lacrosse games.

A red Ford appeared for a brief while, particularly during times when the navy sedan wasn't present. The one time when both cars were in the driveway,  _that_  was a shitstorm of all shitstorms. Mikasa signed her dad up for AA once the dust settled.

In the meantime, we're in that eerie calm before the storm. Aside from that one night Mikasa stayed over, when Mom saw Mr. Ackerman and the newcomer doing it in clear view on her drive home, I haven't caught wind of much. Yet.

* * *

We're walking home from our practices, and it's dead silent between us. It's not one of those comfortable silences that follow after we debate whether Drake or Lil Wayne is the more skillful rapper. Or after we finish a movie on the couch, and we're just sitting there quietly once we've run out of jokes to tell. It's a charged, tense silence, where we're just waiting for the lighting to drop.

"Mikasa, talk to me," I manage. I'm not good at staying quiet for long. It's awkward.

"About what?" she answers dully.

"Something's up with you. Seriously, tell me what's going on."

"What do you want to know?"

"What's bothering you?"

"I think you know already."

I should've known better. You know how for some certain topics, you need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for the person to follow before you can finally address the elephant in the room? Armin's really good at that. He's really good at steering the conversation right into a net. But between Mikasa and me, there's no need to lay out a breadcrumb trail. No need to steer the conversation. It's expected that I just crash right in.

"Okay, so on a scale between one and Kanye, how much of a bitch is she?" She, as in the driver of that silver Nissan.

Mikasa is a tough one to read. She operates only in subtle responses. But years of knowing her taught me the signs, and that tiny uptick at the corner of her mouth is a green light.

"She broke the scale," she answers. "Her name is Christine."

I laugh. "Spill."

She scoffs, and the ball's rolling. "They do it  _every_  night."

"Shit."

"Really loudly."

"Oh my God."

"Multiple rounds."

"I mean, I guess you're used to that from, shit, what's her name? The first one."

"I don't remember either. I'm used to two times a week, not every day right when  _The Daily Show_  comes on."

"I'm so fucking sorry."

She shrugs. "Maybe it's a sign that heart disease won't hit Dad for another decade. He's obviously in good health."

"Only you would say that, Mikasa."

"There's this thing called optimism. I'm giving it a try. On the bright-side, she's might actually be a  _Homo sapien_ , unlike the last one. Pretty sure she was the last surviving Neanderthal in North America."

"Oh, man. So aside from the, uh, midnight fuck routine, you're a little more okay with this new one? Silver Nissan?"

Mikasa snorts. "Just because she can speak in coherent sentences doesn't mean she's a quality person. She leaves her clothes everywhere. Actually, scratch that. She leaves her  _underwear_  everywhere. Yet she has the nerve to bitch at me for leaving a cup in the sink. Claims I'm using her for labor because I'm too lazy to clean up myself. There are so many times when I just wanna say, 'Listen, this is the least you can do, considering the fact that I'm the one who's disinfects the kitchen counters.'"

"Uh, what does that even mean?"

"She's very creative."

"Not following."

"Do I actually have to explain it?"

"I mean, if you wanna leave me in the dark, then it's fine."

"She likes to distract Dad when he cooks, and I guess the bedroom got boring."

"Holy shit! Did you… witness any of it?!"

"Yesterday. I could hear from the garage. When I got into the kitchen, my worst fears—confirmed."

"Oh,  _that's_  why you came over for dinner last night. You should've told me earlier! I would've never guessed."

"And guess what she said when I got back? Just some stuff about how I don't appreciate what she does for me and how one-sided it feels because she's trying to get to know me but I'm giving her the cold-shoulder."

"What does she even do for you?"

"Million-dollar question right there."

"I'm sorry, that sucks."

She looks up at the sky, silent for a minute, before sighing. "It's cool. There's nothing we can do about it, right?"

We continue down the sidewalks, stepping around chunks of half-molten slush. In the Chicago area, springtime is always a hard call. Right when the flowers bloom and the geese head back north, Jack Frost decides he's not completely done with us just yet.

We're quiet again, but it's better than before. It's one of those familiar silences, and from the looks of it, she seems a little more at ease after venting about it. That's the way Mikasa's been every since I met her. People don't ever notice when something's up in her life because A) most of them assume that she's quiet and emotionless by default and B) she's kickass at hiding everything, but with her, nothing gets past me. Again, it's that thing where I can just  _feel_  it when something's off. It's a hard feeling to explain, but I just know.

I start whistling. It's a hymn called "I'll Fly Away." Mom used to teach piano lessons, and when you're the kid of a piano teacher, you kinda get sucked into that black hole. As a kid, I used to kick and scream and cry whenever Mom sat me down to practice for an hour every day. I hated the piano with a burning passion until I heard this rendition of that gospel song on Kanye's first album  _The College Dropout._  It had a cool piano riff, and it wasn't too hard to figure out by ear. Once I had that part down, I added a whistling part to it, and when Mikasa came over, we worked out harmonizing part for her.

Sure enough, she joins in without a hitch.

We go through the tune three times without pause. We turn a corner. Her pace slows. She stops whistling. It's a fixture in her driveway now, parked right smack in the center.

"You okay?" I ask her.

Mikasa shakes her head. She quickens her pace. "Yeah. I wonder if I can use her car because she never seems to leave our house."

We have about thirty seconds until we make it to her driveway. Her knuckles are clenched white, choking the straps of her backpack.

I stop. "Hey."

"What is it?" she says, turning around.

"You wanna come over and eat some leftover pizza?" I ask her.

She looks like she wants to punch something, but she's being Mikasa and soldiering through it and resisting it with all her might. "Please."

I distract her with an embarrassing story about Connie and his chain of failures in pursuing Sasha. That seems to get her mood up—just a smidge, but up, nonetheless. She helps me with math homework. We watch an episode of  _Friends._  We kick the soccer ball around in my backyard. She's trying hard, so fucking hard, to pretend things are okay. But from the way she sends that ball flying over our fence, she's furious. When she checks her messages, I peer over her shoulder to see a string of texts, all written in caps. "WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" sent nearly a dozen times.

"Christine," Mikasa explains tersely.

"What does she want?"

"Dinner." She throws her papers and pens into her backpack. "Thanks for having me over."

" _Daily Show_  tonight?"

"Yes." She says it with a heaviness. A tinge of desperation.

I walk her back to her house. With each step, I can feel the cement of the sidewalk suck away the great vibes of this afternoon. The tense calm is back. She gives me one of those  _awful_  smiles that I can't stand. It's one of those smiles that showcase every one of her teeth, both top and bottom. Creases form at the corner of her eyes.

That smile is off-putting in two ways. For one, she's faking it so hard that it looks like she's in pain rather than in joy. And also, it bothers me that she feels this is necessary. This grimace-smile that says, "Hey, Eren! I'm totally fine, even though it's fucking obvious that my world is in shambles! Don't mind me! I'm good!"

But later, I find a text:  _sry, can't come over. christine is putting me under house arrest._

* * *

For the next few days, Mikasa goes straight home. Each time, it's a new chore. Wiping the windows, unclogging the toilet, frying up some ham, scraping the countertop. We walk back from our practices, and she updates me on the newest developments going on under her roof. In that quiet, controlled fury of hers, she shits on Christine. She does this hilarious impression of her, scrunching up her face and flaring her nostrils, momentarily turning into a demonic human-pig.

Christine apparently got laid off a few weeks ago, which sucks because she had this deal with her ex-husband where she could see her ten-year-old kid if she managed to hold down a job for at least two months. Her longest streak was something like six weeks.

"I think she's trying to redeem herself with me," Mikasa grumbles, kicking at a rock.

"What do you mean?"

"So she screwed up earlier in life, and I'm the second chance she has. Misguided, delusional, troubled me who's letting the boy down the street fuck my brains out every afternoon."

"Wait, which guy?! You never told me!"

"Oh, he's great. Experienced. Knows what he's doing."

"Mikasa, what the hell, I thought we were friends—wait, is that why you haven't been coming over lately?!"

She shoves me. "Relax, relax, she thinks we're friends with benefits or something, so she wants to help me get my life back on track… by watching  _The Bachelorette_  with her."

" _She_  thinks you and I are…"

"She's crazy."

"So the bitch who fucks your dad on the kitchen countertop… is telling you that you can't get some PG-13 action."

"Sound logic, am I right?"

"How do you put up with this?"

She shrugs. "Dad seems happy with her."

Towards her dad, her patience is unlimited, which stands in stark contrast to the smaller hiccups in life. I've seen her rip a milk carton into half when it refuses to open the right way. And not to mention, I've been on the receiving end of her short fuse when she jabs me in the ribs, almost disemboweling me for something she sees as an "insensitive" comment.

Yet towards this drunk, bumbling asshole who can't take care of himself, she puts up with him. Even if it means having to play nice with his girlfriends. On bad days, she spends the night at our place, but when that day passes, she always goes back to that house and its whirlwind of drama.

I think Mikasa still sees her father under those layers of beer belly, tangled beard, and unwashed shirts. She still has hope that one day, when he's ready, he'll shed the pounds, clip the hair, and throw his reeking clothes into the wash, and when that day comes, the dad who taught her how to play lacrosse will reappear in her life.

"You need to tell her to fuck herself." The thought barrels out of my mouth, smashing right through the few filters I have. And it doesn't quite stop there. Out with it, past those broken filters, come everything else. "Like, Mikasa. Don't get me wrong. You're made of fucking steel, and I'm so fucking proud of you for being such a trooper about all this, but this is bullshit, dude. And like not only that, hear me out. You gotta go to the root of it all, go to your dad, and tell him to find some better-quality women to fuck."

"Hey," she says a little defensively. "This has been the happiest he's been in years. He's actually smiling and laughing with Alison—I mean, Janine—dammit, I mean…" She chews on her bottom lip like she does when she's flustered.

"Christine," I answer for her.

"Thank you,  _Christine_. Eren, I think he's in a good place, and that's all I care about."

"He is, but you're not," I mutter.

"That's not true."

"Stop, you're obviously not in a good place. You bitch about these women all the time. You can't stand them. You think they're all trainwrecks. But you still put up with it all at home, and honestly, Mikasa, I think you, out of all people, don't deserve to be in this position."

"It's certainly not ideal, but life's not ideal."

"Bullshit. If life's not ideal, make it ideal. That's like your right as an American."

"Um, says who?"

"Uh, the Bill of fucking Rights? It says we're entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Duh?"

"Eren, that's the Declaration of Independence, not the Bill of Rights. And life's not that simple."

"Who gives a shit? Christine's a total whack job, and since when did she get to order you around, as if you're her kid?"

"Eren, I don't like it. I really don't. I'm in  _The Daily Show_  withdrawal right now. But Dad doesn't need more noise in his life. And now that you mention it, I should probably stop complaining so much—"

"No! Mikasa, that's exactly what you  _should_  be doing! If you're not going to bitch at Christine to her face, at least do it behind her back!"

"What a great philosophy."

"Right?! And Mikasa, my math grade is tanking because you're the only reason I actually do homework. It's because you fucking force me to get my shit together."

"It's hard to tell if you're expressing appreciation or resentment right now."

"Both! We're both losing big here from this stupid, new policy of hers."

"Trust me, I tried to argue it reasonably with her, but she interpreted that as me PMS-ing. She got mad. Then Dad got mad at me for making her mad. Look, I'll talk to Dad about it when things cool down, okay?"

* * *

Update: Things don't cool down.

Mikasa texts me the play-by-play, which goes something like this:

Mikasa tries to talk to her dad, who tries to talk to Christine, who blows up at the two of them for ganging up on her. Mr. Ackerman, in turn, blows up at Christine and Mikasa for creating a big, fat problem in his life. A beer bottle is thrown. It shatters against an old family portrait they took before Mrs. Ackerman passed away. (Mikasa's commentary:  _symbolism much?_ )

Let me tell you, it's awkward being in this position because I'm technically the perpetrator of this whole conflict. I mean, the problem on the table is:  _Can Mikasa go to Eren's house, in spite of false rumors that Eren is screwing Mikasa senseless?_

The whole fucking fiasco concludes with the non-negotiable terms that, no, Mikasa Ackerman, for the sake of her "own good," should spend more time connecting with Christine, instead of "engaging in risky activities" with the "scoundrel" down the road, who's banned from stepping one foot onto Ackerman turf unless he has a "good reason" for being there.

Which, may I add, is all bullshit.

I make my view pretty clear with Mikasa when she manages to escape to the basement, while her dad and his girlfriend make-up in the bedroom.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I demand the minute the call goes through. "I thought I was cool with your dad!"

For fuck's sake, Mr. Ackerman was my soccer coach when I was in elementary school. As well as my basketball coach. As well as my lacrosse coach. I played a lot of sports as a kid.

"Eren, chill." She sighs and rubs her temple. Mikasa gets stress headaches often, which sometimes morph into crippling migraines that have the power to knock her out for a day or two. "Listen, Dad is fine with you. Totally fine."

"Then why am I fucking banned from seeing you? I feel like this is some  _Romeo and Juliet_ shit where your whole family wants to impale or poison me or whatever."

"That's an interesting choice for an analogy—"

"That's not the point! What the hell is going on?!"

"Okay, so bear with me. Dad doesn't care whether or not I'm having sex with you. I made it pretty clear that we're not, by the way. The real problem here is Christine because she's fucking delusional. Even though Dad told Christine that we're like best friends and we're not into that kind of stuff, Christine's brain is like a shambly fusion reactor. The tiniest bit of disagreement, and she's nuclear. So despite reason and logic, she's still convinced you're a bad influence—"

"She's  _never_  met me. How the fuck can she jump to these stupid conclusions?"

"She doesn't like your mom. And you, by extension."

"My mom?"

"Your mom checks up on Dad and brings us pasta because she's so sweet and all, and I guess Christine's paranoid that Dad's into your mom or vice versa—"

" _Are you fucking kidding me?!"_

"I know, I know, it's ridiculous."

"I don't even have words for this. Calling it  _bullshit_  doesn't do it justice, like  _fuck_ , that's—shit, I… Mikasa, what the  _fuck_ …"

"I know, Eren. This sucks. But if it makes you feel any better, Dad's on your side… or he  _wants_  to be on your side, but he's too obsessed with making things work with Christine that he's forced to make concessions. To put it bluntly, he's Christine's bitch now."

"And you said she makes him happy."

There's quiet on the other end. She's listening. "Well, they're still going at it, so yeah."

"How are you holding up though? Shitty night, right?"

"Couldn't have said so better myself. I'm doing okay. A little rattled, but I figured out how to live stream Comedy Central on my laptop, so that's cool."

"How are you so calm?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, shouldn't you be pissed and angry over all this?"

"That won't help anything."

"Well, yeah, but if you want to kick down a door, please just go kick the fucking door down already because life is so fucking unfair to you, Mikasa."

"Hey, I'm pretty damn lucky to have someone to vent to about this."

"That's not luck. That's one of your natural rights as a human being. So where do we go on from here?"

"I think we should wait it out."

"Um, what? Why should you wait it out? Dude, Mikasa, just give her the bird and come on over like you always do because Christine shouldn't be allowed to rule over you like this!"

"I can't. I really shouldn't…"

"Why not?"

"My dad—"

I already know what's coming. At that point, I've lost her. She keeps talking and explaining, but I take the phone away from my ear, drop it onto my bed, and stare out the window across the dark street. It's always that fucking man. Michael Ackerman. He's always drunkenly stumbling through his self-planted minefield of disasters, and Mikasa's the one who has to tiptoe through and yank him backwards before his foot hits the wrong spot. And if she doesn't make it in time, she's always the one cleaning up after him, picking up his pieces, putting them back together the best she can.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Heyooo, it's been a while. So I have this habit, where as I write a fic, I have a document next to me to vomit on. Like if random ideas pop into my head, I slap them there, or if a wave of writer's block overtakes me, I bitch and whine about it there, and let me tell you, that doc got the most attention it's ever gotten in my whole history of writing this fic. I'll give you a few snippets of my venting. If any of you guys have any insight, please let me know what you're thinking because these issues have been my biggest headache in writing these flashbacks. So here goes:
> 
> THINGS I CAN'T, FOR THE LIFE OF ME, FIGURE OUT
> 
> 1) A worry over how to portray Mikasa's string of… potential step-mothers. I don't want to fall into the trap of writing "evil stepmother" cliches. The current ones I've sketched out all seem so… tacky: mid-life-crisis-ridden women who take to extramarital affairs to let off some steam. The backstories I showcase just all seem so overdramatic and unrealistic, but I want the problems to be subtle but pressing at the same time. The question: HOW?
> 
> 2) Bafflement over how to portray Mikasa, through Eren's point of view. So let me lay out the groundwork. Mikasa goes through a transition where she's open with Eren to closing herself off from him altogether. So the thing I'm struggling with right now is trying to figure out how exactly to portray "open" Mikasa. And I also need to figure out how open she can be because by nature, she likes to internalize her problems. Even though she's much more open than later in the fic, she still doesn't wear things on a sleeve. So making cracks about her dad's girlfriends? Does that seem very characteristic of her? I have no idea.
> 
> 3) Confusion over how Eren would react/give her advice. I think I'm making him too good of a listener. The picture I have in my mind right now is that orphanage scene with Historia, where they're both talking about their current predicament, and he's totally giving her the stage to speak. Is he a good listener? Well, at times, def, at other times, hell no, so I don't know, man, IDK.
> 
> Sorry for the braindump. I have the next chapter ready, so stay tuned over the next few days! I'm trying to go into uber update mode because I gotta hit the books soon, so I'll be on hiatus for a while.


	10. Unshackled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the days following her father's death, Mikasa's life resumes—free of a responsibility that burdened her for years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Aaand we're back to present-time with Mikasa (for now)! I know Eren's not done telling his side of the story just yet, but we'll see him again soon ;)

 

**Mikasa**

I'm the only one who didn't seem to get the memo, opting for black leggings and a forest green sweater. The crowds in the hallways seem to part, as if I'm Moses and they're the, well,  _Yellow_  Sea. They give me a wide margin of distance as if a thunderhead of shitty luck looms over my head; they don't dare wander too close, for fear of being pulled into the gloom.

When I sit next to Historia in chemistry, I can feel her big eyes sneak confused glances in my direction. I can sense her lips parting, a question forming, only to press them closed. She twirls her pencil nervously. Her fingers fidget with the hem of her oversized yellow T-shirt.

"Mikasa," she says quietly when the bell rings. "If this… made you uncomfortable. You could've told me." She rubs a lock of golden hair between her index and thumb, knitting her brow in earnest. "I'm not trying to justify charging ahead with the whole hashtag and social media thing, but I just want you to know that the school community is behind you."

I certainly have no doubts of her good intentions. Historia's story is intriguing. Born to a conservative Baptist family, she split off from tradition her freshman year, joined the local Quaker organization, and organizes local queer rights parades several times a year. She sets up blood drives. She hangs out with disabled kids. She raised money to build a school for children in some third-world country. She's the textbook definition of "good," yet a seed of malice grows in my gut, reaching taller and taller, winding through my esophagus, sprouting along my trachea, and blossoming out of my mouth, poison and thorns: "People don't actually care."

"That's not true," she insists. "Look at all this yellow—"

"Historia, I really don't think—"

"Mikasa, come on. Don't tell yourself these kind of things. People actually do care about you—"

My conscience yanks on my tongue, digging its heels in, but this strange malicious adrenaline surges through me, knocking all my reservations face-down into the current. It's an adrenaline that feels like voltage blistering through my veins. The very fibers of my psyche shriek in protest, strained a way they've never experienced before, but this momentum hurtles me forward. Polite, reserved, dishonest Mikasa has been kicked to the curb.

This electrified Mikasa interrupts, "They wear it because they don't want to be an asshole. Not because they actually care. It's like a simple 'yes' or 'no.' If you wear yellow, you're a good person. If not, you're a self-centered jerk. Look, I'm not asking to be showered with stuffed animals or balloons or anything. I just don't want dishonest bullshit."

Historia flinches. She averts her eyes from mine for a split-second, and right there, I've won. She's turned away from me. She's withdrawn all her help, all her support, all her energy. No longer am I tangled to her kindness like a parasitic vine. She has cut me loose, in effect cutting herself free.

She gathers herself, she prepares a retort, but at the last moment, she doubles back. Historia is not a bitch. She squeezes my hand gently before leaving to her next class. "You have my number if you need anyone to talk to. Again, I'm really sorry."

* * *

I've always taken a liking to Armin Arlert. He reminds me of a spider sometimes, having not only a good sense of where delicate, invisible boundaries lay but also a nimble grace that allows him to keep even the most fragile threads intact.

I enter the newspaper room to find him huddled over spreads upon spreads. His violet pen spares no typos, darting to capture a misspelled word, severing dangling participles with a swift slice through the letters. Contrary to nearly every other person in this school, he greets me normally, flashing me that bright smile of his. I know it's genuine because crow's feet gather at the corners of his eyes.

"Hi there," he chirps. "So we've got a ton of stuff to get through, thanks to the snow day, but I think we can still make the deadline if we double down on everything. You wanna take care of that stack?" He nods his head towards a mountain of papers to his right.

"Sure thing," I say, gratefully.

For the next hour, a familiar ensemble: pens scratch, highlighters squeak, pages rustle, printers chug, keyboards clack. The underclassmen whisper in hushed tones. Armin slurps from his mug. At one point, I pause from my editing work and gaze out the window. A skeletal tree cuts the gray sky into icy fragments, disparate pieces soon to crumble, one by one. In the parking lot, I spot a red station wagon backing out of its spot. It's Eren, cutting econ class with Connie like usual, probably sneaking into the movies or going to Chipotle before swinging back to school for practice in the later afternoon. I force my attention back onto this work, this  _distraction_.

I can feel Armin observing me, even though his eyes are trained on the article he's writing on his laptop. I wonder what Eren has said to him regarding me. The three of us were close friends up until the end of freshman year before we all splintered off to our own. Eren gravitated towards the guys on his team. Armin receded into newspaper and debate. I enjoyed a solitude without commitments. Armin and I, however, were still on what might qualify as "friendly" terms. In other words, he was the least affected by what happened, so his relationships with Eren and me are still fairly strong.

Back to the scratching, the squeaking, the rustling, the chugging, the clacking. Underclassmen whisper. Armin slurps.

But then the bell strikes without warning.

What follows is cacophony: backpack zippers squeal, chairs scrape, doors grind, hallways thunder. The yellow consumes me once again.

* * *

Sasha jogs across the parking lot after me. We hardly had a chance to talk during our sprint workouts, so thankfully, I didn't need to regale her with the details of my grief and suffering.

"Wait a minute!" she calls, after taking a moment to catch her breath. "Chill with us! It'll only be like an hour."

She's referring to the lax girls' post practice tradition of gathering in Ymir's backyard just a few minutes' drive away. There, they smoke after every practice. All of the upperclassmen go, except for me.

I check my phone. It's only 6:00. I can picture entering my own house to find Levi sitting on the couch, his skinny, flamingo-like legs propped up, his coffee cup in hand. I can imagine him swiveling his overly-gelled head in my direction. A smirk comes into view. Followed by some annoying comment about how I'm anti-social and pathetic.

We park along the side of Ymir's street. Her driveway is already packed with five other cars, all emblazoned with lacrosse bumper stickers. We bypass the front door and stroll directly into her backyard, towards a circle of lawn chairs. In the center, the snow has melted a ring around the firepit that may or may not be permitted under the local housing codes. Ymir is already in the midst of telling a story, summon laughs and chuckles from the team the way a conductor wills music from a symphony. Everyone's still in their leggings and sweatshirts, their hair still pulled into ponytails.

Ymir pauses when she spots us. "Woah! Is that Mikasa-fucking-Ackerman I see?"

All ponytailed heads turn in my direction. Some drop their gazes immediately, out of respect, given the circumstances. Silence.

"Hey," I say quietly. I take the empty chair beside Annie. There's a tray in her lap covered in this ground-up leafy substance. Her fingers nimbly press the weed into a sheaf of paper.

"Okay," Ymir says, passing me the joint in her hand. "Do me a favor and take a drag on that, will you?" I bring the rolled marijuana to my mouth, but Ymir shakes her head. The other girls laugh. "Goddamn. Silly, silly you. You don't hang out with us enough, but not a worry, girl, we'll get you sorted out. Flip that around."

"Oh." I reverse the joint. I take a drag but come up coughing. The girls laugh.

I've never been into this whole marijuana culture. Or, to put it more accurately, I've never had time for to entertain this whole marijuana culture. For the past few years, my life has revolved around taking care of Dad, but now that enormous responsibility is no more, I'm faced with something I find, believe it or not, even more daunting: adolescence. A time to make bad decisions. A time to revel in mishap. It's like driving a car in automatic for the first time, after years upon years of driving stick. Each tap on the pedal comes with a rush of worry. Did I remember to adjust the shift?—only for that rush to evaporate, leaving me with the freedom that comes with a life of fewer responsibilities. My life has never been linear. I learned how to pay taxes before learning how to roll a joint. I wore cramped, heeled shoes, dragging my dad to various job interviews, before discovering the comfort of a pair of beaten Vans. Several days ago, that defibrillator may have failed in realigning the electrical impulses of my dad's long-gone heart, but it certainly realigned the trajectory of my life.

And it's refreshing as hell.

"So elephant in the room," Ymir says. "Do you wanna talk about what happened?"

"No," I say immediately.

Before I can go on, Ymir claps her hands. "Sweet, good thing we got that out of the way because to be brutally honest with you, we were all talking about it, and we've come to the conclusion that we don't fucking know what to say to make you feel better—"

"Jeez, Ymir," Sasha grumbles. "You're really not help—"

"And so, what we're going to do instead is bitch about this rumor I've picked up on. Word on the street has it that a  _boy_ is after Historia," Ymir continues, leaning back in her chair and crossing her long legs.

"And I'm out," Annie grumbles, shifting in her seat to leave, but Ymir pins her with a sharp look.

"Sit down, Cap. We're going to be talking about  _you_  today too."

Annie scoffs, shoving her hands into her hoodie. "Bull. Learn how to roll your own joints."

"Nope, sit because this concerns a certain  _someone_ ," Ymir sneers.

"Which someone are we talking here?" Mina asks. Her braided pigtails swing as she leans forward. "Is it the Giraffe?"

"What the fuck does that even mean?" Ymir scowls, gesturing with her hand for the joint to go back to her. I pass it to Annie, who passes it to Sasha, who delivers it to the queen of this firepit.

"Wait, wait," Sasha muses. "I think I have an idea. Spaghetti-limbs, awkward, and sweaty, right?"

"Bingo," Annie answers curtly, releasing a deep sigh. She decides on sitting down again, as if struck by the realization that she doesn't, in fact, have anywhere else better to be.

"Okay, okay, before we get too ahead of ourselves, can  _someone_  tell me who the hell the Giraffe is?" Ymir protests. "You bitches are speaking in  _code_  here."

"C'mon," urges Sasha. "Spaghetti legs. Spaghetti arms. Awkward as a thirteen-year-old. Sweat stains  _everywhere_. Does that ring a bell?"

"Uh," Ymir blows an impressive smoke ring. She stamps a foot. "Goddammit, guys. I'm a second semester senior, and this brain here," she points to her temple, "is fried beyond help. I don't have time for these stupid puzzles."

I'm no stranger to the gossip ring, and it's a well-known fact that Annie has a pursuer—an unwanted one, at that. He dresses in blue sweaters, sock ties, and an assortment of slacks. He's like a ghost in the music department, ever-present, everywhere. His towering frame allows him to play towering instruments. Double bass, tuba, trombone, bassoon—they all seem tiny next to him. He's bound for Juilliard this fall. Every atom of his being is invested in his music—leaving nothing for his social skills.

After much hand-wringing, Ymir eventually decodes the Giraffe, who is none other than Bertholdt Hoover. "Fuck no! That's not who I meant!" she yowls, stomping her foot. "And I can't believe y'all made me go through that long-ass guessing game for this. I'm talking about another significant pair of balls in Annie's life—"

" _Oh_ , I know who you're talking about now," Mina says, winking across the fire. Annie scowls in return.

"So Mikasa," Ymir says, leaning forward and crossing her legs. "You have much to catch up on because you've avoided us for so long. So Cap here has a Saturday routine."

Sasha whistles.

"Shut the hell up," Annie retorts.

"Care to enlighten us, Cap?" Ymir purrs.

"I don't give a fuck about this. I'm going home."

"Mikasa, I don't know what the  _fuck_  you've been doing on your Saturday nights, but you've been missing out on some royal fun, and by royal fun, I mean the nastiest debauchery you have ever fucking laid your eyes upon," Ymir proclaims. "Right there, you see, right by that grill—" She points over to her patio. "—is where Cap engaged in some raunchy, fucking activities."

"You're exaggerating the hell out of this," Annie mutters.

"She corrupted a pure soul."

"Do you even understand the definition of the word  _corrupt_?"

"She corrupted him. And from that moment, she created a  _beast_. A fucking monster."

"I didn't know he had it in him," Mina chirps.

"I had no idea he was that hot," Sasha adds.

"Annie," Ymir beckons, blowing two smoke rings. "Speak, girl."

"Screw off."

"Yo, I'm giving you a pass to tell the story yourself, otherwise I'm taking the wheel!"

"Go fly a fucking kite."

"I'll take that as in invitation then," Ymir declares, clearing her throat. She fixes her gaze on me. "So Ackerman, you're familiar with a certain soccer player named Eren, right?"

* * *

I shouldn't feel so ensnared in this cobweb. I cut myself free years ago. I reinforced that just yesterday by shaving off whatever frayed ends remained.

But even so, years of knowing Eren have left this unshakable image of him in my head. I've always seen him as that goofy, bull-headed kid with the wild golden retriever, constantly dribbling around a soccer ball. The kid with a penchant for filthy language, a habit for speaking without a filter. Dense at times, can't take a hint other times, but always keen when it comes to whatever demons decide to trouble me. His fingers still have a knack for jazz tunes on the piano, and his eyes light up when he's playing, even though he insists he's still traumatized from terrifying lessons with his mom ages ago.

This single drop of poison shouldn't have the power to spoil and taint every other memory I've had of him.

But it does.

At first, my brain refuses to even consider that this new Eren exists. It's so at odds with all the history between us; my mind is wholly incapable of connecting old and new together, straining and failing to gap the chasm. This new Eren wears button-downs and Sperry's. This new Eren mixes elaborate drinks for girls. This new Eren trades plastic baggies of weed for twenty-dollar bills. This new Eren makes out with random girls (i.e. Annie). This new Eren has a weekly hook-up routine (i.e. with Annie).

I don't even know what "hook-up" means anymore. It's entirely subjective. It can range from simply kissing to doing it like animals in an empty parking lot.

I can't see it. I don't want to see it. I don't want to think about it.

But my mind is anchored. I can't swim.

The girls chatter. They comment how lucky Annie is. They swoon over what a great kisser he is. They remark how good he is with his hands. They marvel over his eyes. They analyze his "fall from grace," his transition from a nervous guy who's never had his first kiss to a "hungry fuckboy."

Annie is indifferent to it all. "I'm bored," she tells me, while I try my absolute hardest to keep the horror from seeping into my face. "This is my sole entertainment in life." She hands me the joint she just rolled.

"Gotcha," is the only thing I can say. I stick the joint in my mouth. Mina tosses me a lighter. I manage to get a better hit than that first time around.

" _Anyways_ ," Ymir says. "Guess what I heard? Reiner's gonna ask  _my_  Historia to homecoming, and I'll be damned, tomorrow, after he finishes kicking that stupid soccer ball around, I'm gonna fight him. Annie, go tell your boy to tell Reiner to fuck off!"

"For forty-seventh time, I don't fucking care. We just hook up. Sometimes, I forget his name."

"Also, you haven't really laid claim to her yet," Sasha quips. "You just talk about Historia all the time, but you haven't exactly made it clear to her that you're into her yet. It's kinda like you're in this lame-o 'admire from afar' thing."

"That's because I've got a  _plan_  in the works, ladies. One day, we'll get her to come to chagirl Ymir's house, and I'm gonna finesse her outta those hetero-fucking-normative ways of hers. But I can't have Jaeger parading around and steering me off course!"

This is an incredible amount to take in, and a part of me is  _so_  thankful for this weed. While a thousand thoughts swarm my mind, the THC is definitely keeping stronger emotions at bay. It's kicking in, pulling a hazy curtain over everything, blurring the startling truth that Eren of today is a complete stranger to me. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. We're riding trains in opposite directions, and in no time, he'll be nothing but an invisible speck on the horizon. That was the goal all along, right? Why should I let him jump on with me, only to drag him into my abyss, dark and crawling with menacing creatures? Between us was a pool of blue nostalgia, and I was the one who took a huge gulp of air, swam to the bottom, and yanked open the plug, effectively draining everything, leaving nothing but dry, crumbly sediment. That was what I wanted. Nothing between us. I wanted him to see that there's no hope in this desolate wasteland. I wanted him to turn around and move on.

So would this be a success? This new Eren?

I can't stop staring at a mark on Annie's neck. It's a freckle. A bruise. A shadow. A dimple. Certainly not a hickey.

She gives me a sidelong look. "What do you want?"

What comes out of my mouth is one of Eren's lines. Old Eren's lines. There were times when I'd just feel his eyes on me, watching me, smiling, as if the little things I did like blink or sneeze amused him somehow. When I called him out on it, he'd turn red and say, "There's a bug in your hair." And he'd flick at nothing, all while turning redder and redder.

I flicked at an invisible fly buzzing over Annie's head.

* * *

Ymir doesn't let me drive home until I'm completely sober by her standards. Despite her reputation for throwing the best weekend ragers, she stands before me, with her hands on her hips, and commands me to stand on one foot for ten seconds.

"Okay, I trust you, but I better not be hearing news of any Mikasa Ackerman smeared across a guardrail, you hear me?" she barks.

I drive home, but muscle memory takes me to Dad's office building. He worked in some sort of network engineering before Mom's death took a hit to his productivity. They downgraded him to a management job, and when he started swearing at his employees, they gave him the boot. Since then, I'd been dragging him from place to place, building to building, office to office. He had a new job every year.

It's Tuesday. By routine, I swing by the grocery store, and so I steer the car into the Whole Foods parking lot. I walk the same aisles, starting at the fresh produce, swinging into the meats, veering into the dairy, and then winding through the snack aisles. I used to make Dad grab every item on the list. I'd ask him how his day went, pushing the cart alongside him. He'd alternate between complaining about his boss and about his responsibilities.

"Hey, brat."

I turn around, and pushing his own cart, it's him. My legal guardian.

"Levi," I greet him.

He peers into my cart. "Looks like we're actually on the same page. Except you forgot this." He kicks at a box of Heineken beers at the bottom compartment of his shopping cart.

"I don't drink."

"I do," he replies, yawning. "Good thing I ran into you because there's no way in hell I can bike home with all this junk and make it back with a pulse."

"Who's bike are you using?"

"Whichever one I found in the garage."

"Oh. What do you want for dinner?"

"Unless burgers give you explosive diarrhea, I'm down for a quarter-pounder to-go."

"I did not need that image in my head, but cool, let's do it."

We feed the groceries through the checkout line and wheel the cart out into the icy road. Levi whistles something we load up the trunk. I know this tune. I know the harmonizing part to it, and I join in seamlessly after years upon years of practice.

Levi stops whistling. "Damn. Way to steal my thunder."

"I was harmonizing."

"So let me guess, you're one of those musical prodigy fetuses who can tell me whether my car's horn beeps at an A-flat or a C-sharp?"

"Nah. I just know the hymn."

"Are you religious or something? Am I supposed to be dragging you to church or mass or whatever every Sunday?"

"Nope. I know the song because it was on  _The College Dropout_."

"Is that some young-adult movie?"

"Nope, Kanye's debut album."

"You kids listen to some shit music."

Eren worships Kanye. He has Kanye posters splashed across the walls of his room, and Kanye's birthday is basically a holiday to him.

A bitter pang claws at the pit of my stomach. The image of that mark on Annie's neck flashes back into my head. That hickey. Left from Eren's lips kissing her skin.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: And this week's updating spree continues… I head back to school in September, so my goal is to get a good number of chapters out before shit hits the fan and leaves me with zero time to fangirl over EM. Ugh, I'm so not ready to pull all-nighters and study again, but c'est la vie, and la vie can suck sometimes.
> 
> MAJOR MAJOR shoutout to all of you guys who've shed some input on those questions I was struggling with last chapter! A huge thanks to omnipotent13, Eien no Moonlight, Jungianca7, Bersange, SeptarSenior, as well as all you Guests/Anons! And I gotta tip the hat to Elivra26 for I got some really great insights from you guys, and continuing with this storyline just got a lot smoother, all in virtue to the suggestions and comments y'all made. Much love for you ALL 3
> 
> Just so I don't leave you guys too in the dark, I'm planning on throwing in Eren's POV in segments scattered throughout the storyline, kinda like a backwards rendition of how Anthony Doerr sprinkled flash-forwards throughout his plot, only I'll be sprinkling around flashbacks.
> 
> Anyways, same spiel as usual: if you've got the time, please, please, please leave a few words in the comments/reviews and let me know what you think of the chapter!


	11. Comfortably Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa has taken up a new hobby, much to Levi's amusement.

**Levi**

Oh, lookie here. It appears someone's picked up a new hobby.

Listen carefully, I'm going to tell you some useful life advice:  _There are several telltale signs of a new stoner—all of which will cause you to feel the most crippling sense of secondhand embarrassment._  Picking them out of the crowd is like finding a zebra in a herd of cattle. For one, they reek. This is either due to this naive delusion they have, in which drenching themselves in body spray or perfume will magically whisk the odor away ( _note:_  doing this is akin to, say, draping a sheet over a freshly-killed corpse in the living that you don't want your parents to see when they come over),  _or_  simply due to sloppiness, a degenerate fatal flaw of many teenagers. Too high to function, they don't even bother with the old college try, so they walk around in their own little smogs of evidence.

Mikasa is guilty of both, depending on the time of day. In the evenings, when she comes back from school, practice, and whatever teenagers do afterwards, this overly-pungent tropical spray/deodorant/perfume thing radiates from her, and I have to escape outside and smoke a cigarette before the stench clears from my nostrils. But later in the night, after a shower, after she locks herself in her room to do "homework," she does a one-eighty. Another sign of a newbie: they're ravenous. Nothing can sate their hunger. Several times, she lumbers from her den, devoid of her grace, her balance, and her dignity, almost faceplanting onto the landing. Dragging along her personal ozone layer, she makes a sluggish beeline for the fridge, opens the door, stares for a full minute at its contents, enthralled, wowed by the vivid hues of fresh produce, dazzled by the interior light, and eventually, she returns up the stairs, to her poorly-ventilated room, with food spilling from her arms. En route, she may pause to gape at the Van Gogh knock-off in the hallway.

"Have you ever listened to Pink Floyd before?" I asked her once as she shuffled back to the stairs with a jar of peanut butter tucked under her arm.

Yet even with the TV on, in addition to  _The Wall_  playing from her computer upstairs, nothing can hide this terrifying noise from her room, a noise that sounds like an asthmatic pterodactyl with hacking out its lungs. And, ladies and gents, I present to you the third sign of someone who sucks at weed.

You know, I'm actually quite tickled by this. Every evening, there's a new poorly-crafted explanation for her bloodshot eyes, ranging from pollen allergies (in the wintertime) to crying sessions (over  _Grey's Anatomy_ ) to "accidentally pouring shampoo into [her] eyes." She's in denial, and I don't blame her. When the tentacles of teenage-dom finally have in their grasps those stick-up-the-ass wonder children who actually vacuum their rooms once a week, those kids naturally kick and scream and flail. Mikasa's still a teenager, and adolescence is an unsparing disease, no matter how many hard she tries to fight it off. She's crossed the threshold into Stonerville, which, for most people, is the point of no return.

This morning, I found several crumpled sheets of rolling paper in her trashcan—corpses of multiple failed joints. I almost laughed.

When I knock on her door, I hear scuffling on the other side, the classic " _Fuck! Burn the evidence!_ " fiasco.  _Kick the stash under the bed! Flush the joint down the toilet! Febreeze the shit out of the room!_

"What do you want?" she demands, opening the door just a crack.

"FYI, I've got someone coming over at seven. She's an old friend."

"Do I need to have my earphones in at full blast later in the night?" she says wryly.

"It's not like that," I reply irritably. "We'll be in the kitchen. I'm just giving you a head's up, so if you trip on the stairs, your dignity might actually get shafted."

"Cool."

"Should I be worried about anything?" I cross my arms, unimpressed. "Are your grades tanking? Do I need to ground you?"

"My grades are actually on the upswing."

"Really."

"I'm studying right now."

"What is with you with all this studying? It's Friday night. Go get wasted with your friends. Weed is supposed to be  _social_  experience."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, aren't you cute, playing innocent little lamb."

"You know," I call after her as she closes the door on me. "If you suck  _that_  much at rolling joints, a hand pipe isn't a bad alternative."

In my books, there's another set of stoner classifications, if you will. Happy and sad. Happy stoners are fucking annoying. Unending giggles, lopsided grins, obnoxious antics all around—no, thank you. Luckily, brooding, pensive Mikasa isn't a happy stoner in the least, which, I suppose, lumps her in the other camp. Sad stoners smoke to numb things out, to roll a hazy curtain over things they don't want to be seeing, to let the high drown out their lows. Of course, this may backfire. Oftentimes, it does. For some, weed actually has a clarifying effect, bringing the sucky aspects of life into full-focus, and from there's it's a vicious cycle. You want to get higher, further away from it all, but those less than appealing things flood back into mind at increasingly sharper resolution; you get so high—that when you finally fall, you're shattered.

I wonder what she's trying to numb herself from.

* * *

Hanji dances through the house, ogling at the antique grandfather clock in the living room.

"Holy shit, you've got it  _nice_  here," she squeals, running a hand over the chestnut frame. "Levi, I don't know why the  _fuck_  you're thinking about leaving."

"Shut up," I hiss. Upstairs,  _The Wall_  is playing, but you can never too sure when and where Mikasa decides to lurk about like a creepy shadow.

"Oh, so she doesn't know yet?" Hanji puts her hands on her hips. "Shouldn't you at least give her the decency of informing her that you're not into this? See, that's a sign that you're not one-hundred percent sure about this. A dead-set Levi wouldn't give a fuck. He'd barge down her door right now and scream it into her face with the help of a megaphone."

"I haven't gotten around to it," I grit out. I hand her a beer.

She takes a swig and sways to the bookshelf. "Ooh! Have you had a chance to take a look at all these? All your favorites are here, it seems! The classics, Stephen King, all the Pulitzers—damn, you don't ever have to set a foot out of this house. Oh, so tell me about  _her_. Mikasa. Where's she at?"

"You wanna meet her?"

"Is that even a question?"

"She might be a little busy right now."

"Oh, she's got a boy over upstairs? Is that why Pink Floyd's playing so loudly up there?"

"No, try again. The boy is obnoxious as fuck, but luckily, they're on the rocks right now, so I don't have to deal with him for a while."

"Wait, wait, tell me about this boy! Is he a cutie?"

"He's annoying as shit."

"Oh, so he  _is_ cute!

"How did you even make that connection—you know what, fuck it. I don't care."

"Are they gonna get over their rough patch soon?"

"As someone who's deeply invested in their petty drama, all I can say is that there's some weird-ass sexual tension going on."

"Um, no, there isn't." Mikasa has materialized in the kitchen, and she's glowering at me. She seems like she's sobered up. She aggressively wields a banana in her left hand. "If you're so bored to the point of making up gossip to entertain yourself," she says, peeling the banana with a violent jerk of her wrist, "do yourself a favor and get a day job."

"She speaks the truth!" Hanji chimes in, bounding over to imprison Mikasa in a chokehold/hug. "Nice to finally meet you! I'm Hanji! I hope Levi hasn't been making your life  _too_  miserable lately!"

The two actually hit it off—that is, hitting it off in the sense that Mikasa replies to Hanji's spray questions in complete sentences. Mikasa later recedes back into her lair, and Hanji refocuses her attention onto me.

"She's a great girl."

"Debatable."

"But she  _did_  make a good point about you. Open up your computer," she commands.

"Why."

"Just do it."

My email inbox is flooded with messages from the employers Hanji contacted on my behalf. Over the course of this week, I've stared at them, wondering if I should even bother sending an "oh, sorry, never mind, I don't give a fuck about this actually" message. Whoever's in charge of the substitute teacher position gave up hope for me when I didn't show up to the interview last Wednesday. The recruiter for the librarian position dropped me after a persistent two emails. But as for the local newspaper, they've been  _hounding_ me, sending me follow-up after follow-up. Funny how the world works: that's my last choice out of these three unappealing jobs.

Sure enough, I get an earful for the next hour. I go through the usual scheme. Focus on a point on the wall, tone her admonitions out, replay an episode of  _Game of Thrones_  in my head until she wears out. Nod a few times to establish the illusion of attention. Nod more vigorously when she accuses you of not actually paying attention.

But to be fair, she's not wrong.

Living here isn't all that bad. To my surprise, an afternoon of bookkeeping revealed that Michael Ackerman left some cushy arrangements for Mikasa and me. He and Mikasa's mom both held engineering jobs with enviable salaries, and they were big savers. Although they could've afforded something far nicer, they settled for this little suburban home, not particularly glamorous but certainly comfortable, and they didn't chase after flashy brand-name cars, even though that was well within their payrolls. Their priorities were clearly centered on stability, having paid off both the house and having saved enough for Mikasa's undergraduate education, not to mention having they've shuttled away a good amount of money to cover at least two years' worth of living expenses, and—wait, there's more—they've also invested in a sizeable amount of stock to fall back on.

And hell, I'm hardly Mikasa's guardian. Even a marijuana-hazed Mikasa can take care of herself just fine. My presence is just a formality, something to appease a law.

It makes a whole lot of sense to stay.

Yet the neurons in my head are firing away, willing me to get away from here. Because, here, I have no excuses. Here, there's no excuse for being responsible for someone else; Mikasa makes it too easy. Here, there's no excuse for steering my career back on track; I've got virtually no financial burden in this set-up, and those previous headaches of making the rent on time are no longer relevant if I stay put in this upper-middle class paradise. I get ten hours of sleep in a queen-sized bed. I actually eat three meals a day. I shop for groceries at Whole Foods. I get to make my coffee everyday using this fancy, high-tech Keurig. Here, there's no excuse for getting my life together.

* * *

Hannes recently informed me that the probate court is backed up for some reason, and I can't get my guardianship hearing—my exit ticket out of here—until next next Friday, almost two weeks from now. Which means I can't pass the buck on these funeral arrangements.

It occurs to me that I need help. Mikasa wants nothing to do with this whatsoever, so I only have one option.

"Hello?" Carla says on the other end.

"This is Levi."

"Oh, hi! How are you doing, Levi? Everything going okay?"

"I'm fine. I have a question."

"Shoot."

"Who do I invite to Michael's funeral?"

There's a pause on the other end. "Uh, so I don't get out of class until 10 PM, so do you wanna come over around that time? We can talk about it face-to-face because, yeah, you must be in a really tough position, planning a funeral for someone you don't know that well. I can give you a hand."

Around 10PM, the brat opens the front door when I knock.

"Leroy," he sneers. "Come on in."

"It's Le _vi_." A no-shoes house, I assume, from Eren's  _Star Wars_  socks. I kick off my snow boots.

"Mom's not home yet," Eren calls over his shoulder, leading me into their kitchen.

If there's one thing about suburbia, it's impossible to get lost in these houses; each and every one of them looks the same structurally. What distinguishes one house from the next is the atmosphere. While Mikasa's house—or, to be exact,  _my_  house—is neat, clean, and fairly quiet, the Jaeger house is, to put things lightly,  _pandemonium._ Upstairs, music—presumably the brat's—blasts from a speaker, interfering with the soccer game, also at full-blast, on the downstairs TV. Dirty dishes stack sky-high in this creaky Leaning Tower of Pisa-like structure in the sink. On the floor, slobbery dog toys are strewn everywhere, in addition to a puddle of a golden retriever laying right in the center of the kitchen floor, suspiciously unmoving.

"Looks like you finally got rid of that fucking bathrobe," Eren comments when I take a seat at the dining table.

"Thanks for noticing."

He seats himself across to me, where a half-eaten bowl of mac-and-cheese awaits him. "Real talk, do you actually want to be here?"

"Great segue."

"I like to cut to the chase."

"I'm flexible," I equivocate.

"So that means no, you don't want to be here."

"Not necessarily."

"What's with all these bullshit answers?"

"I think your dog's kicked the bucket."

My prediction is accurate: Eren has an attention span of a fly. He immediately kneels by the golden's side, poking and prodding him, until the dog sneezes and halfheartedly flops his tail.

"See, he's still goin' strong, aren't you, boy?" Eren coos, switching into an overly-affectionate dog-owner's voice. He ruffles Dusty's ears; Dusty manages a weak whine in protest.

"So what's the deal with you and Mikasa?" I prod, turning the tables. Two can play at this game of  _Let's Ask Strings of Intrusive, Deeply-Personal Questions!_  "Is this a whole Ross and Rachel, 'we're on a break' sort of bullshit?"

"What are you talking about?" He's on his feet, fidgeting awkwardly with the mac-and-cheese held close to his chest. I've successfully injected the nervous jitters into him.

"Oh,  _please_.  _Friends_  is stupid sometimes, but it's still a cultural relic, you uneducated swine."

"No," he snaps, " _that_  part I actually got, but I don't get is—shit, what the hell… what are you even saying?"

"That was so incoherent, I don't even know how to respond."

"There's  _nothing_  going on between us, okay?"

"That's what all you teenagers say when you get busted."

This goes on for a good five minutes. With each passing second, Eren grows angrier and angrier. I wonder how long it'll take for his head to explode from sheer anger. Unlike Mikasa, Eren's a fucking idiot. While she knows not to take the bait, I get a 110% bite rate from Eren. He just  _has_  to respond with some poorly-constructed retort, and my God, fucking with him comes with this perverse sort of joy. It's disturbing how much fun it is to make this kid uncomfortable.

"Well, listen, Leroy, I've got news for you."

"Oh, do tell."

"There's no way Mikasa and I could  _possibly_  be a thing because, well, guess what,  _I'm hooking up with this other girl, and_ —"

The time is 10:15, and his mom walks in on the middle of Eren running a Hail Mary to save his pride in the wake of my fuckery.

"You what now?" Carla demands, her eyes wide. "I heard something about a girl?"

Eren is ashen-faced. Dead-silent, desperately searching for a reply, coming up dry.

Now, I have two options. I could unilaterally fuck him over and tell Carla excitedly, "Look! Your son has a new side bitch he hooks up with!" That, in turn, will open a writhing, grimy can of worms for a mother of a horny teenage boy. Carla will then detonate. She'll launch into the a heated, furious version of the Talk and go on and on about STD's and condoms. Watching the brat's reaction to everything will be marvelous.

 _Or_  I could also fish him out of this boiling pot. I could be a merciful tyrant and do him a solid, ultimately bypassing that wildly entertaining first option. The answer seems clear,  _but_  the first option only offers intense, immediate satisfaction. This second option, however, comes with long-term upperhand status, where I have a dagger dangling over the brat's head—constantly. What I mean, is blackmail. Leverage.

The kid will essentially be my bitch.

"Oh, we're talking about  _Game of Thrones_ ," I slide in. "He's saying that if he's  _hypothetically_  Tyrion, hooking up with women left and right, he'd probably be swimming with various venereal diseases because condoms haven't been invented yet in that world."

Eren gapes at me.  _Jingle, jingle._  I now have him on a leash.

"Well, I'm sorry to have interrupted the, uh, insightful discussion you two were having, but Eren, I'm gonna need you to clean up that mess in the sink, and—shit, is Dusty alive?!"

Eren, still stunned by my turnaround, takes a moment before responding, "Yeah, he's just tired. I was trying to teach him how to play fetch again."

Carla spins on her heel—to find the minefield of dog toys in the hallway leading to the door. I may have sacrificed a nuclear mother-to-son licking, but I still get to witness a sufficiently furious lecture over cleanliness with a bonus ear-pulling performance by the mother-of-the-year. The victim of this performance tears up as he slinks away to do the dishes.

When Carla cools down, we sit down, and she goes over what she has in mind, which equates to her essentially planning the entire funeral (fine by me, may I add). She wants closed casket service next Sunday, and she instructs me to choose the simplest casket design available. She gives me the name of a flower I've never heard of before to order through the funeral home for the service, and she scribbles down the name of a clergyman, who she'll call later in the week. She rattles off a short list of funeral attendees—an exceedingly short list, totalling seven people comprising of her family, Hannes, Mikasa, and me.

"That's it?" I ask, peering at the names.

"What about Mikasa's friends?" Eren suggests from the sink. "Armin and Sasha?"

Make that a total of  _nine_  people.

"What about Michael's friends?" I inquire.

"He… didn't have many friends in the end," Carla says quietly, clicking and unclicking her pen. "I mean, we could add his teammates from when he played at Notre Dame. He used to have them over all the time, but I think he'd have liked to keep it simple. Just some close friends and family."

"Coworkers?"

"Nope, he switched jobs constantly."

"What about his best friends? College mates?"

"That's Grisha, my... husband. I was close to Michael's late wife. We were a crew when we went to Notre Dame together."

"Lots of double dates, I'd assume."

Carla laughs. "I actually didn't date Grisha until after he got out of medical school and worked for a few years."

"Third and fourth wheel, then."

"Oh, you bet—"

Someone enters from the front door. Carla stiffens. Eren jerks his head towards the entry hallway. A man wearing a shirt and slacks appears in the kitchen. Her wears glasses, and his hair reaches the nape of his neck.

"Grisha," Carla states with little warmth.

"Carla," the newcomer says quietly.

Eren turns, a soapy plate dripping from his hands. "Hi, Dad."

His Dad nods. "How are you, Eren?"

"Good."

"So you're Levi." Grisha walks over and extends my hand. We shake once, briskly.

"That's me."

"I'm Eren's dad," Grisha says. "How is Mikasa doing?"

If only there were some tactful way to say, "She's probably high as a kite right now, and her father's recent death doesn't seem to have any affect on her psyche. She's fuckin' weird." But given this charged atmosphere, I doubt that even if I could express that in most eloquent English, the thought wouldn't be very well received at the moment.

"She's hanging in there," I reply, settling for ambiguity—almost a lie by a omission, but the key thing is that there's a morsel of truth in that.

"How's Zeke?" Eren asks.

"He's still in school. He got accepted for an internship at the circuit court this summer."

"Nice," Eren says, turning back to the dishes.

"It's been a ride, but I'm glad he's finally finding his footing."

No one answers.

Eren, sensing the awkward tension, glances around before shutting off the faucet, wiping his hands on a towel, and contributing, "Yeah, I agree."

Another silence.

Across from me, Carla scribbles something on the notepad. It's just etchings, indecipherable and meaningless. "So how's  _Dina_?" she mutters, making no effort to conceal a sharp sourness.

"Mom," Eren says.

"Is she still brainwashing herself with that centuries-old brick of bullshit—"

" _Mom."_

"Still parading around with those brainless signs of hers? Still trying to convert everyone into thinking like a prehistoric—"

" _Mom!_  Goddammit, can you chill?" Eren interjects heatedly.

The dining chair screeches against the hardwood floors. Carla gets up and storms towards the stairs. She swings around and stares Grisha down. "You came to get the stuff you left behind, right?"

"One of many reasons."

"But the main one, obviously. It's in the garage. There are two boxes."

With that, she's gone, leaving yet another silence to hang in the air. There comes a point when drama unrelated to you no longer becomes entertaining, and I think I've reached that point right about—now.

"You free next Sunday?" I ask Grisha, cutting into the awkwardness as if it's a chunk of lukewarm butter.

"What for?"

"A funeral."

"For Michael?"

"No, for Kim-fucking-Kardashian— _yes_ , for Mikasa's dad."

"I'll be there."

I swiftly exit that cesspit of tension, scooping up the seven-person list, leaving Eren to talk with his dad. From the front driveway, I can see, behind a curtain, Carla's shadow pacing about in a room upstairs. I pass a new car, presumably Grisha's. It's parked along the side of street, rather than in the driveway, as if he's a visitor rather than a resident. That same car passes me a minute later when I make it back to my current residence.

* * *

Mikasa isn't stoned when I get back. She's in the living room reading.

"Where were you?" she asks, not bothering to give me the slightest courtesy of a "Hi!"

"Jaeger's house."

The trigger word. She puts down her book and gives me an alarmed look. "Doing what?"

"Interrogating your boyfriend. He wouldn't spill the beans, so I got to waterboard him. A few times."

As if I've flipped on a switch, she flushes. "You actually need to shut the hell up with those jokes," she growls.

"Yowch, someone's pissy. Did your stash run out? Are you going into withdrawal right now?"

"I'm taking a break."

"Is that a confession at last I hear?"

She rebounds, "A break from homework."

" _Homework._ "

"That's correct."

" _Homework_  as in… running out of rolling paper and resorting to loose-leaf notebook paper to roll your shitty joints." Her face is impassive—her default setting—but I pick up on a minute twitch at the corner of her eye. Gotcha. "Oh, I see you, Mikasa Ackerman. I  _saw_  that miserable excuse of a joint when I was taking out your trash. Jesus, did you  _not_  see the little gift I left you the other day?"

"I saw it. Thank you. It's a pretty glass ornament."

"That's no glass ornament, you dipshit. It's a hand-pipe. I'm being nice to you for once. Do you not recognize compassion when it hits you square in the face?"

"A hand-pipe used for what?"

"This innocent girl ruse was funny the first time, but now it's getting stale."

"Speaking of stale, we need more bread. Can you get some tomorrow? I'm busy. I have a… sleepover."

"Oh, so a party. To be exact, a rager."

"False. I have practice in the morning, and I need to go to the mall in the afternoon."

I shrug and turn on the TV, effectively destroying her serene reading space.

* * *

She's gone the following morning, and she doesn't get back until the evening, hauling shopping bags up to her room. I order pizza for dinner: a good buffer food. Something to ward off hangovers—at least, the more extreme hangovers.

When she comes down from her lair, I see her in make-up for the first time. She's wearing something that wouldn't qualify as conservative: a crimson, V-neck cami top thing that shows off some cleavage with dark skinny jeans. She doesn't look bad, except her whole look is offset by the squirmy grimace on her face.

"Those look painful," I comment, nodding towards the pair of strappy heels suffocating the life out of her feet.

She nervously takes a bite of her pizza. "You're not wrong in that."

"I'm forecasting a twisted ankle."

"Thanks for believing in me."

"I don't."

"I was being sarcastic."

" _I_  wasn't."

She mutters something under her breath before getting up and slipping on a jacket. "I'm leaving."

"One more slice." I point at a rather sizeable piece.

"I'm not hungry anymore."

"Fine, have fun hugging the toilet bowl all night."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just eat the fucking slice."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: WOW! I'm geeked because on FF, we're up to 89 reviews! We're almost to triple-digits, fam, and so I've got a deal for you guys: if we can make it to 100, I'll give you guys a present (*cough* Chapter 12 on Saturday night/Sunday morning).
> 
> We're getting into some choppy waters between Eren and Mikasa right now, and oh, don't I love angst. I know I've been neglected Levi's hemisphere (i.e. his background, his situation, his history with Erwin), but for now, Eremika's gonna get center stage. For all of you Eruri fans out there, I'm afraid you're gonna have to wait a little bit. I'll throw in a few nuggets here and there, but Levi's time to shine will come later.
> 
> I really gotta thank you guys for giving me a piece of your time and providing me some feedback. Looks like Current Procrastinating and A Self-Deprecating Person both blazed through the fic last night, and wow, you guys rock, going out of your ways to leave a comment on EVERY fucking chapter, like damn, my heart skipped a beat when I saw all those email notifications. S/O to ChocoRoyale, Rogmes, Jungianca6, and bersange on AO3, and to Eien no Moonlight, jenna789, omnipotent13, CaptainHuggyface3218, and Elivra26—LOVED reading all of your impressions, thoughts, and kind words. Damn, I'm so pumped right now. And also I'm sending virtual hugs to Kaekiro/Selena for listening to me vent about writers' struggles (uh, if you haven't read her fics yet, hop onto AO3 and check out "Kaleidoscopes"!). And another S/O to eien-no-tsuki, jungianca6, and saythanksplease for your support on Tumblr! I'm screaming because every one of guys are so great, and y'all are the light of my life.
> 
> Ngl my wrists kinda hurt from typing so much in the past few days, but this update spree shall remain ABLAZE. See ya guys, soon!


	12. Adolescence, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parties. A staple of adolescence. Mikasa wades into the muck but finds herself struggling with certain milestones of girlhood, from applying winged eyeliner to walking in heels.

**Mikasa**

Every day, after practice, I smoke with the other upperclassmen girls. One by one, each of them brings a piece of gossip and/or a complaint about their day.

Ymir usually takes the lion's share of our time. The beginning of her spiel gets stale after a while. Historia this, Historia that. She hasn't even had a face-to-face interaction with her target yet, claiming that she's waiting for "an opening." After she temporarily gets over her infatuation, Ymir has a remarkable talent for prying secrets out of people. She always manages to bring a piece of jaw-dropping news, news that really shouldn't be circulating in public—be that as it may, she still manages to catch wind of it. And if she can't extract the information with her own hands, she's equally nimble with working the network, mapping out the connections that can bring her the information she wants. Her grades will tell you otherwise, but ultimately, her street smarts shape her infamous reputation. Nobody messes with her.

Except Reiner.

For some reason not yet known to me, Ymir has this bitter, competitive relationship with Reiner Braun, a double varsity senior athlete. He committed to Alabama for football, a tough choice considering he had to decide between that option and soccer for UNC-Chapel Hill The strain between them only magnified when Historia was thrown into the mix. Just Wednesday, Reiner successful snagged her as his homecoming date, and Ymir was  _ablaze_  for a good fifteen.

Sasha usually goes next. Her primary issue centers on Keith Shardis, the AP US History teacher, as well as the varsity boys soccer coach. As a former Navy SEAL, Shardis teaches by staunch discipline and crippling intimidation. As an unaware eccentric, Sasha is the bane of his existence. He has a strict "no eating" rule in class, which, Sasha is naturally bound to break by sneaking a bite of her bizarre snacks during his lectures. On the first day of junior year, after screaming his lungs out at her, he went out of his way to find Coach Rico and request that she force Sasha to run an extra two miles on the track after practice. The punishments have only skyrocketed in length and severity.

Hannah annoys me. She shows up from time to time, and whenever she does, she goes on and on about her "lovely" knight-in-shining-armor, Franz. Luckily, Ymir and Annie make snarky cracks throughout her sickly-sweet litany of love to keep the rest of us more polite cynics from leaving, but in the end, we can stomach small doses of Hannah. She comes over only when Franz has something going on, otherwise she directly bolts for Franz's house after practice.

Mina occasionally runs into some boy troubles, but the bulk of her turn involves being Annie's silence translator. Even so, Annie doesn't say much to anyone about the inner workings of her life, something I find both relieving and agonizing. On one hand, I don't have to hear the grisly details between her and Eren; but on the other hand, I don't get to hear the grisly details between her and Eren. A part of me itches to know; another part of me gags at the thought of it.

When it's my turn to come around, I struggle to find something to contribute. There's no shame in passing—after all, that's Annie's default response—but the atmosphere of this warm, boisterous, marijuana-addled is something of itself. Every complaint, every thought, every concern is accepted and stamped with validation (well, maybe with the exception of Hannah's gushing). Ymir's rantings—acknowledged by groans, cheers, and/or laughs. Sasha's traumas with Shardis—recognized with pats on the back and comments of reassurance. Mina's boy problems—analyzed and dissected with plenty of outbursts of "Fucking asshole!" Annie's silence—embraced nonetheless.

Yet I can't bring the words to the surface of my lips. They're trapped in a safe, sealed behind a lock, its combination code unbeknownst to me.

Ymir has no inhibitions throwing me a line. Today's topic: "Boys," she states. "Or maybe even girls. Whatever you're into—go."

"There's… no one," I mutter, flushing.

Ymir reaches behind her, and before I know it, she flings a handful of snow in my direction with her bare hand. "Mikasa- _fucking-_ Ackerman, this is fucking unacceptable! You, girl, are so hot. I'd say, hottest one out of all of us."

"No, that's not true," I stammer.

"Mikasa, you're a catch," Sasha says, nodding vigorously.

"Amen, sista," Mina adds.

"Guys, seriously. I'm really not—"

"Listen," Annie cuts me off. She leans forward in her chair. "Out of all my years getting high with Ymir, I can guarantee you that praise doesn't come easily out of that motor-mouth. So when it does, it's creed."

"Full disclosure here, if Historia wasn't on my radar, I'd have zero objections going after you!" Ymir reaffirms. "Question, though. Have you gotten your first kiss yet?"

I swallow nervously. Everyone's eyes are pinned onto me. "No," I say, almost a whisper.

"This. Is. Blasphemy," Ymir breathes. "Bitches, you hear that? This is blasphemy!"

"We gotta change that!" Sasha says.

"I'm… not really looking for a relationship right now," I say quickly. "There's a lot going on."

"Sista, lemme paint a picture for you, okay?" Ymir replies, taking a drag from her joint. The firelight flickers over her freckled features, and it might be due to the weed, but I'm entranced. "Life sucks. I don't know what might be the sole cause of it, but whatever the case, life is not fair. Life is a fucking  _bitch_. Life sucks away all things fun, but you know what I think you should do, Mikasa?  _This_  Saturday night, right here, we're gonna have some fun. Even if life tells us, no, this week is going to suck for you, we're gonna revolt, we're gonna take charge, rip the fucking reins away from life, and we're gonna have a good time, even if the universe says otherwise, you hear me—"

"Shit, you're ridiculously smacked right now," Annie sighs. "Take it easy, will you?"

"Uh,  _excuse me_ , Annie, I was in the middle of my spiel," Ymir snaps. She takes another drag to reorient herself. "So," she says, looking me directly in the eye, "we're gonna find a good kisser for you."

They go on interrogating me, asking me what kind of guys I was into. Bookish types? Jocks? Tall guys? Short guys? When "I don't know" ceases being a passable answer, Annie breaks from her aloof silence yet again asked for a list of celebrities I like.

"How many?" I ask.

She crosses her arms, ponders for a moment. "Three. Right off the top of your head. You have five seconds, go."

"Um, Cristiano Ronaldo, Yoann Gourcuff, Marc Bartra."

"I haven't heard of the last two," Mina says.

"Soccer players," Annie and I say at the exact same time. Her icy gaze lingers on me for a moment before flitting back to the pitfire before us.

It seems we have a shared interest.

* * *

Sasha and I have started carpooling for the last two days. We're both on a budget, Sasha especially because she's planning to be a first-generation college student in her family. Her parents were industrial workers from Ohio, until her mom managed to find a white-collar managerial job in this area. Claiming it's for their college funds, she has a "side business" with this bald boy on the soccer team named Connie.

When she drops me off today after Ymir's, she raises the lid of the center console in her car. Hidden in the center console of her car is a heap of plastic baggies, each packed with a gram of marijuana. "Hey, by the way, do you need some more stuff?"

"No, I need a break," I tell her, "but thanks."

I'm getting too hooked on weed. Levi's on to me, and he refuses to clam up about it.

Yet there's still a small amount left in the stash behind my headboard.

Levi's friend Hanji stops by for an hour, and she showers me with the typical questions adults ask. How's school? How are classes? Are you thinking about college yet? Usually, I answer curtly and concisely, but to my surprise, I actually like his friend. Not many people genuinely listen the way she does, and she invites me to come see her lab at the University of Chicago campus sometime. I silently recall a tabloid article title: "Levi Ackerman rumored to have sizzling affair with University of Chicago scientist."

When Hanji leaves, Levi disappears somewhere soon after. I open my desk drawer, take out the hand pipe Levi left on my dresser, open my bedroom window, and crawl out onto the slanted roof of my house. There's a great view of the stars here, and I've taken to spending my evenings here instead of smoking out my window (a world's supply of Febreeze can't deter Levi's keen sense of smell).

I just can't stop thinking about Eren when I'm high. Who is he? I used to have an encyclopedia of all things Eren filed away in head, built from evenings upon evenings of skittering back and forth between our houses. In elementary school, we played soccer together in my backyard, and afterwards, we'd jump the fences to get to his house and watch a movie. We grew close with Armin, and every summer, his grandfather would drive us across the eastern half of the United States, through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and up Long Island until we reached the Arlerts' beachside cottage. We walked together to and from school every single day through middle school and into early high school.

I knew his likes, his dislikes, his guilty pleasures, his deepest secrets; I knew every facet of his from growing up together, from the smoothest planes of his life to the roughest patches. He loved improvising "Rhapsody in Blue" on his mom's old piano, but he still has war flashbacks from learning "Clair de Lune." He couldn't stand anything vegetable-based, but he could wolf down mac-and-cheese in no-time flat. He loved his mother more than a son ever possibly could; in spite of his habit to bicker with her, he always let up in the end and went out of his way to give her a hand. He resented his father for giving his mother so much sadness, but he always kindled a faith that things would work out in the end for their family.

To me, he was my best friend. He coaxed out a side of me I was wholly unfamiliar with. A sarcastic tongue, an appreciation of gallows-humor, a low tolerance for bullshit. Every afternoon, when I would escape to his house, I could breathe. I could laugh. I could be human.

But now? Who is he? Eren Jaeger. My neighbor, once my best friend, now a stranger. Which parts of the past Eren, if any, are still intact? And which parts have been strewn away?

Tomorrow night, I'll see him again. I'll see him "hooking up" with Annie on Ymir's, whatever that means.

I shouldn't feel like this—whatever this unsettling queasiness is. I can't diagnose the problem. There shouldn't be a problem in the first place. I shouldn't even be thinking about him right now. He's living his life, freed from the responsibility of taking care of broken, battered Mikasa, and if anything, I should be happy for him. I should be  _happy_  for him. He's moving on to bigger, better things, and I suppose "hooking up" with Annie, a girl who bluntly admitted to forgetting his name sometimes, is one such bigger, better thing. I am happy for him.  _I am happy for him._ Of course, I am. No question about it.

* * *

Saturday afternoon, Sasha and I trail Ymir through H&M, watching her sniff the disorganized racks like a bloodhound tracking an animal. "No, nope, hell no, no, no, shit, no," she mutters, plastic coat hangers screeching and clanking as she pushes aside each reject after a two-second glance.

"She's good," Sasha whispers.

In no time, Ymir dumps a pile of clothing into my arms and forces me into a changing room. It's baffling how such… minimal strips of clothing can cost so much more than a normal T-shirt, which is probably triple the cloth surface area of a skimpy halter top barely covering the back area. Ymir sits outside of the changing room and orders me to try on various combinations of the clothes she picked out.

"Yes," she answers when I stumble out in a pair of overly-sparkly open-toed heels and a black romper just two inches longer than the bottom hem of my underwear.

"I don't dig the heels," Sasha mumbles, her mouth full of burrito. The screening process is quickly approaching the hour mark, and Sasha took the liberty to make a brief Chipotle run.

"Shut up, Sash. She looks hot."

"Ymir, I can't do this," I protest when she tosses me another ensemble. "I've never worn anything this… revealing."

Ymir reaches for her burrito bowl. Prying the aluminum lid off, she motions with her fork. "About time you started taking advantage of how fly you look," she scoffs. "Great boobs, world-class ass, long, pretty legs—you need to  _flaunt_  all that, girl. Also, FYI, we found you a certain someone who might be interested in getting you to first base."

I had never exactly agreed to this whole arrangement. It was kind of foisted upon me, but the more I think I about it, the more I wonder about what it's like, that first base. I've never thought particularly much about kissing, but in a way, it's a rite of passage of adolescence, along with sex, of course. As all rites of passage go, I'm eager to take up the gauntlet—but with whom, I'm still unclear. I always hear that same old nugget of advice, to save everything for the right guy, for someone who means a lot to you. That's what Hannah told me before shifting into a long-winded story about her first kiss with Franz. But on the other hand, the other girls had far less dreamy experiences. Sasha "accidentally" made out with Connie last year. Mina kissed a German exchange student named Thomas, who happened to fly home the very next day. Annie doesn't even remember who her first kiss was. And Ymir blacked out when it happened. None of them feel as if they lost something invaluable by giving their first kisses to a someone instead of  _the_  one.

I suppose it's nice to have some experience, so when  _the_  one comes along, that first kiss between us goes smoothly.

"Who is it?" I ask warily.

"Good try, but I'm not spilling 'til tonight!" Ymir replies, cackling.

We go through at least four more outfits until Ymir finally compromises with a wine-colored V-neck cami showing some, but not too much, cleavage, paired with ripped black jeans and black strappy heels. "You know, I'll let you off the hook this one time," Ymir tells me, ordering me to spin around with a twirl of her fork. "This is conservative as fuck, honestly, but you're a wee baby hoe right now, so we'll ease you in. But give it a few weeks, and in no time, your confidence will shoot up, and then you're gonna dress sluttier and sluttier, mark my words."

* * *

It takes four YouTube videos and a total of thirty minutes to manage some passable winged eyeliner. My trashcan is padded with multiple discarded makeup remover wipes from multiple failed attempts. The first time, my hand jitters too much, leaving a harsh zig-zag across my eyelid. The second time, the eyeliner tip goes on too thickly. The third time, I apply the liner too thinly, but when I try to reline, I, once again, apply it too thickly. The fourth time, I successful line my eyes, but the wing looks like a smudgy blob. The fifth time, the wing looks like a piece of hair that decided to get stuck at the corner of my eye. The sixth time, the wing actually looks kind of okay, but my eyeliner brush accidentally leaves a mark just millimeters from the wing. When I try to surgically erase the mark with a remover wipe, part of the somewhat-acceptable wing gets caught as collateral damage. The seventh time, the universe is kind to me.

Now, that's just the story for my right eye. The saga for my left eye is far more grueling, and basically, it concludes with the realization that perfect symmetry isn't attainable by the human hand.

Mascara and lipstick, thankfully, are much more straightforward. Too winded by the eyeliner, I decide to tackle eyebrow pencil, foundation, and hair curling another day.

A stranger stares at me from my mirror through her (painstakingly) painted eyes. She wobbles in her heels, and her gaze flits towards her V-neck, agonizing over how revealing it is while simultaneously stressing over whether it's revealing enough.

I'm low-hanging fruit for Levi. He taunts, he teases, he forces me to eat an extra slice of pizza.

"I'm not going to drink," I tell him, rising to my unsteady feet.

"That's what I tell myself every night," he replies, making himself another pot of coffee. "News flash, it never works."

"Believe me, I won't."

"I don't want some dipshit officer calling me at 2AM about how liquid courage got you to run a red light, and it just so happens that an incoming fourteen-wheeler comes barreling in and flattens your car into a fucking pancake. Next thing you know, there's guts and pieces—"

" _Can you not say that?"_  I interrupt him hotly, my voice shaking.

Immediately, he knows he's gone too far. For once, there's no snippy comeback from him. He watches the coffee machine dribble espresso into his mug. I glower at him, but he keeps his gaze steady on the coffee. The machine cuts off. He takes a sip of espresso.

"Too soon, I guess," he says, after a long silence.

"The apology of the century. You're an asshole, you know that?" I spit back at him before turning on my heel and marching into the garage.

Before I can yank open the door, his infuriating voice drones from the kitchen, "You left your purse, honey."

I stomp back in. My bag dangles from his fingers while he sips and sips from that goddamned coffee mug that used to be my mother's. I rip my purse out of his hand. "Fuck you," I tell him before storming back into the garage. I've never been particularly liberal with swear words, but since Levi's move-in, I've seen the wonders of the word  _fuck_. It's a missile launcher that can carry unreal astronomical quantities of spite and anger, all densely-packed into a single, explosive syllable.

* * *

I'm still fuming by the time I ring Ymir's doorbell.

Parking took forever to find because every open space on her street is already occupied by another person at the party. Walking the two blocks from my parking spot to her house came with almost two sprained ankles, courtesy of these Victorian torture devices of shoes. The back of my heel has been rubbed raw from the faux leather strap.

From her doorstep, I can hear music blasting through the walls. Her house is pulsating. Nearly two minutes pass. No one has come to the front door. I hug my jacket closer around me. This skimpy top provides  _zero_  layering against these awful Chicago winters. I'm about to send a text to Sasha or Ymir until I hear footsteps behind me.

"Hey, the door's unlocked." A guy just slightly taller than me shoots me a rakish grin. His light-brown hair is gelled stylishly, and he wears a dark blue shirt tucked into tailored khaki slacks. He steps onto the front porch. A hint of cologne come off of him. "Hey, it's Mikasa, right?" he asks, extending a hand. "I hear about you all the time. You kick ass at lax."

"Uh, thanks. And you are?" I reach out my hand, intending to shake, but he slides his hand across my palm. His fingers curl around mine, and finally, he shakes.

"We gotta dap, Mikasa. That was horrendous. Try again," he says. He smiles before adding in a low voice, "If you nail it this time, I'll tell you my name."

We go for a Take Two. I nail it this time.

"I'm Jean Kirschtein," the guy says. He opens the door for me and gestures for me to go in first. From inside, the pounding music seeps out, echoing across the neighborhood. "After you, Mikasa."

I turn around, and that's when I realize that he's red in the face. "Thanks, Jean."

"You've got some pretty hair, Mikasa," he calls after me.

"Thank you," I reply, turning around once more, but he's disappeared, enveloped by the writhing crowd.

There are people  _everywhere_ , all faces I've passed in the hallways of high school but don't exactly know on a personal level. On the main floor, people are mainly talking—or making out on whichever pieces of furniture are available. I pass through the kitchen, and on the countertops are stacks of pizza boxes and rows of various alcohol, ranging from different types of beers to assorted Smirnoff Ice flavors to several handles of vodka and tequila.

I venture into the basement, the source of the ear-shattering music. Downstairs, dozens of people are dancing, grinding on each other in a dim, purplish light. I find Ymir there, dancing with, to my surprise, Historia. Historia's dressed modestly, in a cute dress and Converse, and she's actually quite the dancer. She waves to me—talking is pretty futile in the deafening basement—and any weird, negative sentiment between us over #prayforAckerman seems to have dissipated completely. Ymir yells something at me, pointing at me up and down and giving me a thumb's up. I give her a thumb's up back.

Somewhere in the crowd, I run into Sasha, and she tackles me in an embrace. Wildly, she gestures for me to dance. Stiffly, I mimic her movements, but she only shakes her head, grabs my arm, and pulls me upstairs. My ears ring when we ascend into the quieter kitchen space.

"Hey! You made it!" Sasha exclaims. "You are sober right now? You better not be, Mikasa. We're gonna have a  _lot_  of fun, and you can't have fun being sober as a brick! You ready for a round of pong?"

"Of what?"

"Beer pong! Let's go! The table's outside!"

"Sash, I don't drink," I say quickly.

"C'mon, Mikasa. It's just a little bit of beer!"

"Sasha, seriously," I plead.

"Oh, alright," she concedes grumpily. She rummages around the pockets of her dress until she finds a lighter and a plastic baggie. "Then you gotta catch up," she tells me, shaking the baggie of weed in my face. She doesn't let up until I take my hand-pipe out of my purse and get at least five good hits.

As always, I'm thankful for the marijuana. The whirl of the party slows, and I feel much more at ease than I did before, wandering aimlessly through the chaos. Sasha instructs me to gather as many beer bottles I can carry, as well as a stack of red cups.

Meanwhile, she peers through the crowd, into the living room. Suddenly, she cups her hands around her mouth and hollers, at the top of her lungs, "CONNIE SPRINGER, YOU FUCKING LOSER. GET OVER HERE. I WANT A REMATCH, YOU HEAR ME?"

A bald head drunkenly wades through the living room crowd. Connie emerges, beer stains spotting his shirt. Behind him, it's Jean. His face has taken on a reddish hue, probably thanks to whatever's in the cup in his hand.

"Oh, hey, Sash," Connie drawls, careening into the kitchen. "Ready to get wrecked again?"

"Nope," Sasha responds indignantly. Roughly, she cuffs an arm around me. "Because I've got Mikasa on me side this time! No more dumb, plastered Ymir!"

We move outside into the chilly weather. There's a few people gathered around the campfire. I can see Mina making out with someone in a lawnchair. We gather around a ping-pong table set up on the patio.

"Mikasa, huh?" Connie replies, peering at me with his large eyes. He arranges the cups in a pyramid formation on their side. I do the same for ours. "You seem like a worthy foe, but you guys won't be able to come close to the dream team. Right, Jean-boy?"

"Hey, fuck you," Jean growls, flushing on top of his alcohol-induced glow. One by one, he pops the caps off of the beer bottles and pours its contents into the empty red cups on our side. "Call me that one more time, and you're stuck with that sonuvabitch Jaeger as your partner."

Connie snorts. "He's busy getting laid upstairs, so you're my only bet,  _Jean-boy._ "

My gut lurches.

"Who the hell actually wants to fuck Jaeger? He's a tactless moron!"

"Hey, to be fair, Eren's actually pretty good with the ladies," Conne replies. "If anything, you seem jealous."

"No, I'm not," I say immediately—at the exact same time as Jean.

I can't breathe. I take a step backwards. I stumble a bit in my heels. Jean catches my arm before my ankle takes the bulk of my weight. "Hey, careful there, Mikasa. You okay? A little too smacked?"

"I need a drink," I mutter.

"I gotcha," Jean says. "What do you like?"

"Just a coke."

"With vodka?"

"No, just a coke."

Jean looks at me funny, but within a minute, he zips into the house and zips back out with my coke. I thank him and take huge gulps from the cup. Luckily, nobody makes much out of my outburst. Internally, I steel myself.  _I am happy for him._ I am so fucking happy for him.

Jean fills up the cups on his and Connie's side, and it's game time.

Sasha makes the first toss. The ping-pong ball sails through the air and plunks into center cup in the boys' pyramid. "Drink, bitch," she orders Connie.

Connie gives her the finger and chugs the beer. He chucks the ping-pong ball back over in our direction. Sasha catches it deftly over her head.

"Your turn, Mikasa!" Sasha drops the ball in my hand.

It takes me a minute to orient myself. Everything's hazy from the weed, but when I toss the ball, it falls into the frontmost cup.

"Bottoms up, Jean," I call over the table.

Jean lifts his cup to me, shooting me a look of mock derision. He downs it and returns the ball to our side. I catch it.

"We get another turn because we both got it into the cup," Sasha tells me. I hand her the ball. She dribbles it against the surface of the table before flinging it over to the other side. It bounces against the rim of a corner cup, but it bounces away, landing onto the ground.

Connie makes a shot. "Y'know, I wanna see a drunk Mikasa—"

"You won't see a drunk Mikasa, but you can see a Mikasa high off her ass!" Sasha cuts in for me. She drinks the cup for me, while I get another hit off of the pipe. "She'll blaze up, and I'll drink for her."

"Wait that's not equal then," Jean protests. "If anything, that's fucking condescending because you guys doubly incapacitated each time we make it in. It's like you're handicapping yourselves."

"Yo, I don't fucking care!" Connie howls, shoving Jean to make a toss. "As long as we fucking win, right?"

Jean shoves him back. "No, you little shit, we need to make this a fair fight, otherwise the win doesn't feel as legitimate in the end."

"But the thing is, things  _are_ fair," a drunk voice calls from behind us. "Jean-boy, you're this pathetic-ass dead-weight dragging Connie down, so they're handicapping themselves to even the playing field."

Footsteps shuffle from the kitchen backdoor. Every nerve in my body freezes over when I turn around—to find Eren swaying towards us, red cup in hand, a huge, goofy grin on his face. His hair is ruffled, his clothes wrinkled, and I can only guess from what. He gives Sasha a fist bump. He salutes Connie. When Jean tells him to fuck off, he responds by telling him to suck a dick.

When he turns towards me, a strange moment passes between us. It's a familiar pattern that I've seen time and again throughout our friendship, in which somehow, we find ourselves entangled in an argument. Elevated voices, harsh words, pointed accusations. We don't speak for up to half an hour. But that was the maximum silent period between us—because always, Eren's the first one to crack. With each other, we were terrible at holding grudges. He breaks, and inevitably, I break soon after. If we're enduring each other in the same room, within ten minutes of our tense silence, he makes eye contact with me, I glare back, and next thing we know, he's laughing, a completely inappropriate reaction, but slowly, my defenses disintegrate, and I can't help but join him.

Old habits die hard is what they say, right?

Especially when one's under the influence.

Sure enough, he lumbers towards me with a familiar, unchanging, smile. It's a radiant smile that never fails to reach you with its warmth, no matter how armored your defenses are, because it's guaranteed to be genuine. It's the smile of my best friend.

"Hey, Mikasa."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: GUYS, I'M SCREAMING AT THE RESPONSE THIS FIC GOT FOR THE LAST CHAPTER. Remember that deal we made about getting to triple digits for reviews? Y'all FUCKING delivered—not only on FF, but on AO3 as well! I opened my email yesterday to find so many kind, encouraging comments. Much love to Eien no Moonlight, Elivra26, omnipotent13, CaptainHuggyface3218, Pinwheely, Gokuu the Carrot, KarinaAltDied, clara22sanderson, SeptarSenior, pterodachili, and you kind Guest for taking the time to leave some much-appreciated thoughts on FF and getting us to 100! And on AO3, I'd like to thank Jungianca6, bersange, Nauti, Elis, Arya_Silvertongue, Calla19, ChocoRoyale, Panko, and Rogmes for your kind words and encouragement! Asdfasd you guys really rock :') Also, if I accidentally left anyone out by accident, pls lmk!
> 
> This chapter turned out a bit longer than I had expected it to be… and the story of Mikasa's first party clearly isn't over yet, so I'm planning on splitting this into two parts. But damn, this fic is getting really, really fun to write. It's kinda like a walk down memory lane for me, back to those trashy high school house parties on Saturday nights :') You know, I've been thinking. Even though I was saying that I'm going on hiatus when school starts, I'd really like to keep it up, kind of as a fun thing to let off some steam when the going gets rough.
> 
> I'll try to get Chapter 13 out soon, but this week's a little crazy with preparations, packing, etc., so I'm afraid the updating spree's gonna have to take a breather for a bit. See y'all later!


	13. Adolescence, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A game of beer pong, a few hits from a bowl, and a makeshift dance floor in the basement—it's a high school party. Mikasa finds herself reuniting with Eren and learning the ropes of some classic underage fun.

**Mikasa**

My inner conscience thrashes against its iron-clad cage.  _Back off,_ it wails,  _get out of there. Set him free._

Alarms ring, sirens wail, flags flutter.

But I don't care.

Weed has a way of blurring things, of reducing thorns to cloudy shadows. My eyes can only see the rose. I reach out my hand, and my fingers curl around the flower—even as tiny rivulets of red trickle from my fingertips.

* * *

Before I can even respond, he stumbles forward, arms wide, crashing into me in a sloppy, drunken bear hug.

"How're you doing?!" he exclaims, rocking us side to side.

He smells not of the Eren I grew up with, of AXE body spray and sweat after an afternoon of kicking around the soccer ball, but instead of vodka and a trace of some mysterious cologne.

"I'm doing okay," I manage, slowly wrapping my arms around his back. He's grown over the last year and a half, looming just a few inches over me now.

"Jaeger, piss off," Jean snarls from the other end of the ping-pong table.

Sheepishly, Eren pulls away, and instantly, the merciless Chicago winter rushes into the void he leaves, sending a chill through my core. He's drunk, hopelessly so. Whatever sloshing about the red plastic cup in his hand has washed away any trace of lingering anger, and he's just beaming at me with the simple, innocent grin of a younger Eren.

"Nice bowl," he says, taking the pipe from my hand and inspecting it with unfocused eyes. "New hobby?"

"Yeah," I reply, smiling. "I'm giving it a whirl."

"Fuck you, Jaeger," Jean growls. "You're interrupting our game."

"Yeah, Eren!" Connie chimes in, pounding a fist on the table. "I'm trying to wreck Sasha, and you're distracting me!"

"Hey, we're just having a fucking conversation," Eren snaps. "Gentlemen, you're free to carry on."

"Can you just get the hell outta here?" Jean retorts, pegging the ping-pong ball directly at Eren's face. Eren ducks. The ball bounces across the patio before disappearing into the grass.

"And it's back to us!" Sasha whoops. She jabs a finger at Jean. "After  _this_  shit finds where he launched the ball."

"Yo, that doesn't count! I was trying to shoo away this fucking fly!" " Jean protests, gesturing madly in Eren's direction.

"C'mon, Eren can stay," Sasha says. "We need a ref, anyways."

"Sweet, though my money's on you two because ladies and gents, we're in the presence of greatness. Greatness as in Navy-fucking-SEAL level of badassery right here," Eren drawls, looping an arm around my shoulders.

"This ref is corrupt as fuck," Jean grumbles. "Taking sides,  _totally_  impartial."

Connie whacks him in the ass. "Shut up and find the fucking ball."

Jean reluctantly retreats into the grass, mumbling obscenities under his breath. Connie and Sasha continue our match, in the form of slinging verbal slurs back and forth across the table. And Eren stands next to me, his arm curled around me, laughing drunkenly at their banter.

Alarms ring. Sirens wail. Flags flutter.

But I don't care.

I hook an arm around his shoulder, and we're holding each other, and we're giggling—stupidly, at nothing in particularly.

"Hey, so how high are you right now?" he asks me, that goofy grin unwavering. I've never seen him this shamelessly giddy before in my entire life. He tips his red Solo cup back, draining its contents and crushing it underfoot.

"That's not good for the environment," I tell him, watching him kick the squashed piece of red plastic into Ymir's yard.

"The penguins and polar bears will be fine. I wanna hear all about how you got into this whole thing," he says, ignoring my advice, like usual. He takes the glass pipe from my hand. "Got a light?"

I dig through my purse for my lighter. He raises the pipe to his lips, and I light the whatever's remaining in the bowl. He takes a hit, and expertly, he blows three perfectly-formed smoke rings into the air.

"You could give Ymir a run for her money," I comment. "Ten outta ten."

He snorts. "No one can top this motherfucking artistry right here. But back to you, spill. How did goody-two-shoes you get into this whole stoner business?"

"Well, I started socializing with my teammates."

"Sheesh, it's about time you actually learn the names of the people you play with."

"You make a valid point."

He flashes me a smug smile and takes another drag. This time, he overshoots. Before I know it, he's reeling over, coughing little clouds of marijuana smoke.

"What artistry," I remark.

"Shut up," he rasps. "Goddammit, I need some water."

Connie and Sasha seem preoccupied in their trash talk contest, and Jean is nowhere to be seen, so we make our way back inside, back into the light, the noise, and the people.

"So," Eren says, after chugging down a cup of tap water. "What's your favorite thing to do high?"

"I don't know. I sit on the roof sometimes. Look at the stars. Think."

"Oh my God."

"What?"

"You're doing it all wrong," he says, trying his hardest to stifle a laugh.

"Uh, then what, pray tell, is the proper way to do it?"

"Okay, rookie, listen carefully. For starters, never  _ever_  get high and broody at the same time because you're gonna put yourself in a shitty place. Ideally, you shouldn't don't do it alone because that's kinda sucky and lame, but if you ever find yourself in that position, the  _best_  thing to do is to go to bed, turn out the lights, put on some good music, close your eyes, and  _bam_."

"And what then?"

"Do I actually have to explain? You enjoy it, duh. Music will  _never_  sound more dope than when you're stoned. And you see some cool shit too."

"What do you listen to?"

"Old, nostalgic stuff. It helps me re-live things."

"Like what?"

He's quiet for a moment. "I dunno, like easier times when there was less to worry about."

We're both quiet for a moment.

"We're okay, right?" he asks. We could always depend on him to cut through the clutter and charge on straight to the point. "Like I didn't mean any of that, like the stuff I said about not being friends."

"Yes," I say immediately.

"So we're cool."

"As a cucumber."

He scowls. "I hate you."

I shrug.

"You want anything?" he asks, nodding towards the assortment of alcohol sprawled across Ymir's kitchen counter. "I can make my own personal mix, which, may I add, is a total fucking hit."

"I don't drink, Eren."

"Right, sorry. Damn, I should know that."

"It's okay."

Eren's always been bad at holding grudges towards me. Our spats in the past always followed the same pattern. Eren snaps. He gives me the silent treatment. He ends it, usually within twenty-four hours. This recent flare-up between us is a record in the books.

The backdoor bursts open, and Sasha prances in, taking a victory lap around us. A glum Connie and a sour Jean trail behind her.

"Guess who ripped these guys a new one?" she hollers to nobody, reaching across and Eren and me for some drink called Smirnoff. She yanks of the cap and drinks straight from the bottle. "Dis bitch right here!" she rasps, wiping her mouth with her jacket sleeve.

"Oh, please," Jean sneers. "Don't get cocky, Braus. Jaeger said it himself. You had Mikasa on your side, so the game was rigged from the start."

"I thought I was 'corrupt as fuck,'" Eren comments.

"Shit, is that Jaeger I see?!" a yowl echoes from around the corner. Ymir drunkenly saunters in, an arm cuffed around a cheery Historia.

"Ymir," Eren greets her, giving her a two-finger salute.

"So you finally emerge, you dirty, disgusting son of a bitch. About time, I'll say. You need to work on your manners, kid. Didn't even bother to give me the courtesy of a  _hi_  when you came in. Went right to it, didn't you?" Ymir drawls. In one fluid motion, she reaches for a beer, slams it against the counter, and raises the rim of the bottle to her lips. A dislodged cap rattles against the ground somewhere.

Eren shrugs. A sheepish grin begins to cross his face, but when his gaze flits to mine, it dissipates immediately. "Sorry, Ymir."

"I was worried one of you went into cardiac arrest up there, like  _goddamn_ , I gotta give it to you, Jaeger. You've got the stamina of a motherfucking workhorse—"

"Eren, what's she talking about?" I venture to ask. But I already know the answer to my own question. He can't seem to meet my gaze, his eyes pinned to the ground. Ymir's teasing fades into the background buzz.

"This dude is a machine, Ackerman—"

"Shut up, Ymir—"

"He just goes and goes and goes and—"

"Ymir,  _c'mon_ —"

"You know, Jaeger. Sometimes I wish I was straight sometimes because Annie should consider herself the luckiest fucking bitch—"

" _Can you just shut the fuck up?!"_

His voice gushes forth with a momentum that only the guilt of a confession can drive, and his eyes finally meet mine—just for a moment—before they tear away angrily. "I'll catch up with you guys later," he spits out. As he storms out of the kitchen, the smell of that alien cologne lingers for a moment before it trails after him.

"Geez, what's his problem?" Ymir huffs, sipping at her beer with an unfazed shrug. "Never seen someone so pissed off by a compliment."

And at last, at this worst possible moment, it all hits.

The universe slams down on the breaks. Whatever greater force out there puts time in a chokehold. And the most intense high of my life barges into me at full impact.

* * *

I try to enjoy the dance floor. Historia tries to tease a more carefree side out of me, taking both of my hands and showing me how to move to the music, but hardly two minutes pass when I have to pry myself out of the mass of shifting, erratic bodies. The lights send stars shooting across my line of sight. When the bass drops to whatever song we're wiggling to, a weight over my chest presses deeper and deeper into my airway, suffocating me with each beat.

The world is so slow. I wonder if I'm breathing. Each intake of what little oxygen is down here takes what seems to be at least thirty seconds. Each exhale, a full minute.

At this rate, I'm going to die. Respiratory arrest. Sprawled on the floor, trampled by these senseless, writhing bodies. I have to get out of here.

I stumble upstairs. Run into Ymir. Noise dribbles out of her mouth like caramel, but nothing registers in my head. She has Jean by the arm. I think she's trying to introduce us to each other.

I push past them, crashing into the wall, but it's fine. It's support for a watery, liquid-like me, who'd splatter to the ground without its sturdy, dependable surface. Hugging the wall, I shuffle into the kitchen. I make it to the sink.

Dry. My mouth is so fucking dry. I can feel each little bump and dip on the surface of my tongue against the sides of my cheeks.

Am I breathing?

I crane my neck, positioning my mouth right under the spigot of the sink. My fingers twist the faucet. A waterfall with the crashing force that would rival Niagara Falls cascades down upon my face, and dammit, I'm drowning. My knees give way, and I tumble to the cold tile. I can spot the living room from around the corner of this kitchen island.

From here, I can see them.

I watch them from this pathetic spot on the ground. He presses her against the wall, just inches from knocking over the TV. She holds him closer, clawing at the back of his shirt. He grabs her ass. She rakes her fingers through his hair.

It's disorienting watching two people grow ever more desperate for each other as a lone observer; it's like when you're five years old, sitting in the back of the car, looking through the rear-view window as the glittering skyline of Chicago ebbs away, and you're left with just dimly-lit billboards and flickering street lamps to guide your way back home. I watch her tear the Eren I knew and grew up with apart, slowly, fiber by fiber, as she inches them closer to the stairs, teasing him, beckoning him up each step, until they disappear from view, en route to a mattress where she'll finish the deed. For the second time. Or third? Fourth? I hear footsteps skitter above me. The final cord keeping the old Eren together snaps when a door upstairs closes shut.

A wave of bone-deep nausea rushes through my core, and I feel myself shrinking, while the walls cave in around me.

"Mikasa?"

My name. That's me. Sad, gloomy, pathetic me.

"Mikasa, what are you doing down there?"

Jean. Jean Kirschtein. His horse-like face casts a shadow over me.

"We gotta dap," I tell him, raising my hand up to the ceiling.

"Here, let me help you up."

"No, dap me first."

"Mikasa, you're crying."

"No, I'm not."

The world is a whirl, but before I know it, I'm back on my wobbly feet, hoisted skyward by Jean's arms.

"Mikasa, what's wrong? Are you okay?" he asks me. His hands grip me on the shoulders, steadying me.

"Jean, I'm gonna die," I rasp. "Can you die from too much weed?"

To my shock, he laughs. "No, Mikasa. No one, in the history of mankind, has ever overdosed on marijuana. Well, maybe except for those crazy idiots who smoke like… a pound a day—which you didn't! You'll be fine."

"I'm not gonna stop breathing all of a sudden, am I?"

"Nope."

"Pinky promise?"

"Pinky promise," he concedes, hooking his tiny finger around mine. "Hey, you wanna go outside for a bit? Get some fresh air?"

He herds me through the hallway, out the front door. The moment we exit the house, escaping the pounding headache of EDM, the reeking stench of beer, and the overhanging presence upstairs, a much-needed, crisp breeze fills my lungs.

"Are you going to tell me why you're crying now?" Jean asks me, helping me sit down on the top step of the front porch.

"Jean, I'm not crying."

"Yes, you are."

I touch my cheeks. My fingers come off with a hint of salty moisture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: HELLO, hope you guys liked that! Deepest apologies for the five-ish months it took me to FINALLY update, but at long last, here it fucking is. I'll be honest, guys. Writing is kinda like some form of exercise, and I feel so slack and weak and rusty from these hiatus months, like over the summer, when I was "in shape," blazing through these chapters, this would've been a piece of cake, but this short chapter took nearly a month of opening this document, writing a paragraph or two, then closing out of frustration in order to finally materialize into what vaguely resembles a chapter, so I'm so sorry if this is a dip in quality from what you might be used to for this fic. But I'm back for now! I can't promise swift updates because I'm still grinding away at school, but if I ever get some breathing time, I'll try to shoot out an update!


	14. Bad Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi finds himself having to channel his inner Legal Guardian™ in order to deal with a hefty case of teenage tomfoolery.

**Levi**

_So this is what parenting feels like_ , I muse as I cock my arm back, raising the crumpled, rolled-up issue of  _The Chicago Tribune_  high above my head. At full-throttle, I give Jean Kirschtein's ass a good thwack. His shrill howl tears into the wintry night.

"I could press physical assault charges!" he squawks, struggling to straighten up, but a second thwack keeps him pinned down, ass-up, against the damned vehicle that decapitated our mailbox.

Before you jump to any conclusions and declare me a deranged motherfucker who enjoys beating up kids in his bathrobe, let's rewind about ten minutes.

Not too long ago, I was sound asleep in the living room, passed out with an empty pizza box spread across my lap—until a loud crash sounding from the driveway snapped me awake. When I shuffled out to see what the hell was going on, I nearly dropped my phone into the snow-covered front porch. A car that I didn't recognize was parked in front of our driveway, a wooden stump where our mailbox once stood wedged into its front bumper. The other half of the mailbox had snapped clean off, clanging noisily against asphalt as the Chicago winds sent it tumbling down the road. Some teenager, presumably wasted, hobbled after the tin box, loudly yelling obscenities. The passenger side door of the car opened. And, lo and behold: our princess emerged.

Mikasa stumbled out, her legs jittering in those heels. Her purse swung about wildly as she careened up the icy driveway. She was crying.

For the record, I did not sign up for this bullcrap. I was thrown into this desolate moat by the hands of Hanji-fucking-Zoe.

I lean down, close enough so that one of Jean Kirschtein's ratty little eyes can see that I'm not fucking around. "I could press DUI charges," I reply in a low voice. I pause, thinking. "Well, actually to be fair, that's not how it works," I correct myself, tucking the newspaper under my arm. I pull my cell phone from the pocket of my bathrobe and hit three keys. Apart from Mikasa's quiet sobbing, the dial tones are the only other sound on this quiet, graveyard street. "Look here, fucker. What's going to happen is that I'm gonna hit this green 'call' button, and in no time flat, some gentlemen in blue are going to be the ones pressing the charges—"

"Levi, that won't be necessary," Mikasa cuts in sharply, between sobs.

"Can it," I reply, giving Jean another thwack. "I'll deal with your shit later. Go inside."

She doesn't budge from her spot. She looks like a chihuahua that got trampled on, jittering uncontrollably in the cold. "Jean was giving me a ride back," she insists, glaring at me.

"Jean was driving around piss-drunk," I answer her. "Don't make me repeat myself, Mikasa. Get your ass inside before you get pneumonia or whatever."

"Like you would actually care," she says coldly. "You're just saying that because that would be an extra inconvenience to you on top this grand inconvenience of having to be here. You don't give a fuck about this, do you?"

If anything, the truth she spoke should be something I should have laughed at. If anything, I should've said to her, "You know what, you're absolutely right. What the fuck am I doing here?" If anything, we should've ditched Jean Kirschtein and his bruised ass out in the cold and gone inside together to split our sides over how ridiculous this whole setup is: a washed-up drunkard janitor having to put up with an emotionally-rundown teenage girl's bullshit.

But instead, I tell her solemnly, "What about you, Mikasa? Do you give a fuck either? Your dad just kicked the bucket for  _this_  exact reason, didn't he?"

I quickly realize that the outwards anger I drew out of Mikasa earlier today in no way compares to the true, unbridled fury that now sizzles behind her tight grimace, threatening to burst free in the form of scathing, iron-hot rebuke. She hardly has it together. One more prod from me, and we go nuclear.

I've fucked up.

Before I can say anything else, she storms up the driveway, her heels clacking out a livid beat:  _Fuck. You. Fuck. You_. The glass shards from the front door tinkle to the porch when she slams it behind her.

"Nice going," Jean comments.

I give Jean one final spank with the paper before telling him to give me his goddamned keys and walk home. With his tail between his legs, he scuttles drunkenly off.

* * *

She's curled up in a ball on the couch when I head inside, breathing raggedly while tears stream, leaving trails of mascara down her face.

"I'm going to die," she rasps when I sit down next to her. "I overdosed. I'm going into respiratory arrest."

I snort.

"I should've known you were just going to let me die," Mikasa mutters forlornly, curling up even tighter.

This, my friends, is your classic case of marijuana-induced paranoia. A part of me wants to fuck with her. Plant a few horrific fake conspiracies in her head, trick her into believing that the CIA currently has a dozen snipers trained on her at this very second. Move a muscle, and she's toast. But believe it or not, compassion isn't a totally foreign language to me. I bring her a blanket and a glass of water.

"Cotton-mouthy, huh?" I ask, watching her ravenously gulp down the liquid. "Hungry?"

She nods vigorously. "My mouth feels like a desert."

"So two things," I tell her as I throw two slices of leftover pizza into the microwave. "A) You're not going to die. If you were, I'd be a little more freaked out because that would mean having to deal with your decaying body. And B) you didn't overdose. This is weed, for fuck's sake. Not heroin."

"You're positive?" she murmurs from the couch.

"One-hundred-fucking-percent."

"I don't believe you."

"Fine by me," I sigh, handing her the steaming plate of pepperoni and cheese. "Careful, don't give your esophagus a third-degree burn."

Blearily, she takes a huge bite from one slice, chewing with her mouth wide open like a four-legged grazing animal. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

I flip on the TV. At this hour, there's nothing on but old-timey movies and infomercials. I sign into Hanji's Netflix account, and I scroll through the cartoons.

"Don't patronize me," Mikasa grumbles, her mouth full of pizza. "I'm not six."

"Just relax and watch this." I put on an episode of  _Rick and Morty_. The theme song blares from the speakers as the title sequence runs, cutting into a spacescape panning into view alongside swirling miscellaneous images against the black, starry sky.

"Why are we doing this, Levi."

"Shut up and look at the colors. They'll help you chill out."

We stare at the mindless plotline for a good five minutes. Gradually, her hitched breath slows to normal, non-respiratory-arrest-esque rhythm, and her sobbing dwindles down to an occasional sniffle. By the middle of the episode, she's gaping at the television in the fashion of a classic teenage stoner.

"So I crossed the line today," I say.

"Yeah, I know."

"Asshole move on my part, I'll admit."

"Agreed. You're the most insensitive bastard I've ever met."

"I get that from time to time."

"No kidding."

"Yeah."

"You were an absolute ass to Jean too. He was just trying to help."

"Okay, maybe giving him an ass-whooping was a little…" I search for an adjective.

"Uncivilized?" Mikasa offers.

"Sure. But you guys should've known better."

"I had an... emergency. I needed to get home. ASAP. Jean was giving me a lift."

"An emergency."

"I just needed to get out of there."

"Huh."

"Yep."

"Was somebody bothering you?"

"Well," she says, after some hesitation. "Not directly."

"Does anyone else's ass need a whooping?" I venture to ask.

To this, she laughs unexpectedly. "That would be quite a scene."

"Does this scene need to be made?"

"It's fine, Levi."

"I'm going to ask one last time."

"I promise, it's all good."

"If you say so."

"Thanks, though."

"But I'm serious. No more drunk boyfriends behind the wheel. Point. Blank. Period."

"Jean isn't my boyfriend. He's just a friend."

"The next time shit like this happens, give me a ring, you hear me? Otherwise, the boyf's gonna get more than a spanking."

"Okay, you really need to stop physically assaulting the kids in our neighborhood. It's seriously messed up, Levi."

"I don't like this one. Break up with him. I smell a whiny Mama's boy in this Kirschtein kid. Even the Jaeger brat is better in my books."

"How many times do I need to tell you?  _Neither_  of them are my boyfriend!"

"Ten bucks his mom still packs his lunch. Tucks him into bed. Wipes his ass. "

"He's actually a good guy, Levi. Lay off of him."

"Actually, you're right. This one's pathetic, but at least he doesn't seem like a dumbass virgin like Jaeger is."

"You'd be surprised," Mikasa scoffs bitterly.

"What does that even mean?"

"Nothing."

Bingo. Check and mate. I know all I need to know.

* * *

I always thought that rooming with Furlan would be an inevitable crash-and-burn type of affair. Especially given our history.

Ages back, in the early 2000's, before Facebook and Twitter had millennials by the balls, even before MySpace had its swift rise and punishing fall, we worked the grapevine to obtain whatever information we needed on a particular individual. Of course, the ability to work the grapevine banked on whether or not your circles intersected with those of your person of interest, so I was shit-outta-luck when it came to scraping together details on my to-be roommate, Furlan Church.

We actually came from the same college in NYC, but while I spent my most of my Manhattan days getting stoned in my dorm room, Furlan ran with the the boys bound for Wall Street, skirting from one networking event to another in tailored suits and gleaming wristwatches. Cheap convenience store beer was my poison; fine cognac worth an arm and a leg was his. To get back to Chicago for the holidays, I hitchhiked when finances were tight (which was usually the case); he spent his winter breaks in far-flung corners of the word—jet-skiing on the Amazon River and poaching cheetahs in the Kenyan grasslands (neither which I think are legal, but hey, when you're a man of means, anything goes, right?).

Before settling down in Evanston, our main mode of contact consisted of email exchanges back and forth over who was bringing the refrigerator, who was finding us a couch, and who was in charge of getting a TV. Since I was balls-deep in student loans from undergrad, he had taken care of the fridge. As well as the couch. In addition to the TV. Aside from my share of the rent, he had everything covered—all the furnishings, the decorations, the groceries.

When Furlan opened the door to our Evanston home just a few blocks east of the Northwestern campus, a silence fell between us as the gears in our heads churned to make the connections.

Sophomore year. His dorm room. Fruity drinks. Followed by twelve shots of vodka.

We had met at The Heights, an open-roof bar famous for its margaritas. He had approached me in a courageous way, cutting through the clutter and asking me what I liked to drink.

That time in my life, I was going through some shit, juggling multiple chainsaws while trying to walk a razor-thin tightrope. Before her heart gave out, my mom lived the last few years of her life dating a caravan troupe of crackpot junkies, each one worse than the last. Sophomore year was when she went from swallowing Oxy to shooting up in the backyard with the boyfriend of the week. Her addiction was a quicksand pit for any income that came into our bank account, sucking in each paycheck that she deposited. The paychecks soon disappeared when her boss sent her home with a cardboard box of her cubicle belongings. The quicksand pit soon took her old wedding ring. Her retirement funds. And eventually, my college fund.

Sundays through Thursdays were the nearest thing to hell. I was working three, sometimes four, jobs, kicking like hell for the both of us to stay afloat. Fridays and Saturdays were a drunken haze that served as a temporary respite before Monday would roll around again.

I needed people like Furlan in that time to help me defuse. Furlan was an outlet for me, and later on, I found out that served a similar purpose for him.

For a few months, we ran into each other once every two weeks or so, usually at The Heights. We'd go through the same motions. A couple of crude jokes. A few too many drinks. He would pin me against a wall, his hardness grinding against mine, his hand hungrily reaching behind me to grab my ass. A zipper undone, fingers down my pants if we were in the mood for some public indecency—which was most of the time. Monopolizing the men's bathroom soon after, followed by taking the action back to his room when people shouted death threats at us.

I never knew his name. We kept it that way: an unspoken mutual agreement. He was a vessel in which I poured all my shame and hurt; likewise, was I to him. Maybe, at some point during these escapades, our names were uttered, but they fell upon deaf ears.

I had to hand it to him. All these years, he hadn't changed since those days at The Heights. He cut to chase, shrugging aside the painfully awkward five seconds of speechless confusion, and helped me unload my boxes upon boxes of shit. In midst of it all, he even tossed me a beer. Not unlike old times.

He was conversational, but not annoyingly so, as many conversationalists go. He showed a genuine interest towards my background, even though there wasn't much to say about that, asking questions from a place of earnest curiosity, rather than filling up the awkward silences with makeshift conversation. And best of all, he shut up when it was time to shut up.

"Funny we never actually had a real conversation in college, aside from talking each other up. I feel like we could've been pals," he remarked after our third beers. Emptied, flattened cardboard boxes sat stacked on our driveway, ready to be scooped up by the next day's recycling guy. We sat on the front porch steps, watching the sun dip under the horizon.

"Had no idea who the fuck you were," I replied, handing him the bottle opener, "but you seemed like a cocksucker for Goldman-Sachs. Not exactly my crowd, to be honest with you."

"Neither for me," Furlan answered with a shrug. "I was damn good at faking it, though."

"So what the hell are you doing out here at Northwestern?"

"Trying to do something more meaningful than pushing around money and, well, as you put it, 'sucking cock' for a living I guess."

"Huh."

"I like talking to people. That's why I did okay at all those schmooze-fests in New York. You talk people up, make them feel good about themselves, and you've effectively sucked their cock. And there you have it: you've got them in your pocket. But I wasn't really about that whole 'using people' thing. It felt a little too political."

"So if you're not sucking cock, then what exactly are you doing?"

"Well, I'm still kinda sucking cock, but it's in a way that makes me feel a little better about myself."

I actually cracked a smile. "Elaborate."

"In a way, getting into broadcast news is sucking cock for ratings and viewings, but at least it's not your fifty-year-old corporate boss's chlamydia-ridden, wrinkly-ass shaft that's somehow sunburned from his getaway weekend at his beach house in Cape Cod."

"Not the most ideal situation, huh."

"You know what would be more ideal?"

By the time I found his lips roaming my neck, not a single bottle of Heineken remained in the fridge. He worked my shirt, kissing each patch of skin unveiled with the release of each button. In a matter of seconds, he undid my belt, and his fingers pulled down my pants and my boxers. And before I knew it, he was running his tongue up my length.

* * *

Our princess has shaken off her bad trip by the time the morning rolls around. Her roost on the couch is abandoned when I walk past the living room. The glass broken from last night's altercation has been swept up, and the window has been replaced. A plate of waffle and scrambled eggs await me, as well as a full pitcher of black coffee. Today's Sunday paper sits folded neatly within arm's reach.

By the time I get to the comics, the front door rattles open and chatters filters into the main foyer.

"You sure about the bumper? I feel so bad about this."

"Seriously, you're fine, Mikasa."

"Well, promise me you'll get that quote, and we'll talk later."

"Roger that, but my decision is final. You get off scot-free. It's totally cool."

"Thank you for coming over so early in the morning."

"Nah, I was awake. It's no big deal. But, uh, yeah. Ring me up whenever you've got a chunk of free time, and we should totally check out that new Spielberg flick. I've heard nothing but rave reviews."

"Sounds like a plan."

"Alright. I'm off. Catch ya in school Monday."

The door closes. Mikasa enters the kitchen with the toolbox in hand, bundled up in her winter jacket. "Shut up," she says before I have a chance to comment on anything, making a beeline for her bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: After yet another hiatus, here we are again :) Hello, friends! Sorry for the wait, but WUARD is back in business! We're gonna start seeing some glimpses into Levi's backstory soon, so hang tight for now. Lmk how you guys thought of this chapter by leaving a review or a comment! Always much appreciate Also, I do have a question for you all. Are there any perspectives you'd like to see in this story? I dabbled in a bit of Eren a few chapters back and found that I really dig channeling my inner angry, angsty teenage boy. I've thought about writing through Carla's POV too, maybe even Armin's. Would love to hear some insight from you guys and even if it's just like a name you wanna throw into the hat, I'd still love to see what you all think! Catch y'all next time <3


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